Respected Advocacy Group for Women Voters...Until Now
Conceived and founded by Page Gardner, a 20-year-veteran of presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and congressional campaigns and a political and communications manager and strategist, Women's Voices, Women Vote was established to register more unmarried women voters. As the WVWV website notes:
...[A]ccording to the U.S. Census, 46% of all voting-age women are unmarried, and 55% of all women not registered to vote are unmarried. Fifteen million unmarried women were not registered to vote in 2004, and nearly 20 million unmarried women did not cast ballots on Election Day. If unmarried women voted at the same rate as married women, over six million more voters would have gone to the polls in 2004.Well-respected among national women's advocacy groups, the organization came under fire during the already-volatile Democratic primary season in spring 2008. Triggered by a spate of events prior to the North Carolina primary, WVWV's actions have been called into question.
Mysterious Phone Calls Frustrate Many
According to Facing South, the online newsletter of the Institute for Southern Studies, 'robocalls' have caused confusion among black voters in North Carolina:N.C. residents have reported receiving peculiar automated calls from someone claiming to be "Lamont Williams." The caller says that a "voter registration packet" is coming in the mail, and the recipient can sign it and mail it back to be registered to vote. No other information is provided.The call is deceptive because the deadline has already passed for mail-in registrations for North Carolina's May 6 primary. Also, many who have received the ...are already registered. The call's suggestion that they're not registered has caused widespread confusion and drawn hundreds of complaints, including many from African-American voters who received the calls.
A Question of Civil Liberties
The calls were eventually traced back to Women's Voices, Women Vote. About.com's Guide to Civil Liberties, Tom Head, comments on the alleged disingenuous manner in which the Washington-based group made those calls:The robocall from Women's Voices Women Vote, which made no reference to the organization (leaving listeners with the impression that it was being made from the local voting precinct), targeted black registered voters with a recording telling them (incorrectly) that they would need to wait until they received a form in the mail in order to vote. Oh, and the form? 110,000 of the WVWV mailers will finally arrive in eastern North Carolina sometime next week. The N.C. Department of Justice is investigating, but the North Carolina NAACP has also filed a complaint.
Voter Fraud a Felony
"When you mess with the right to vote, you're messing with everything that is fundamental in our democracy," stated N.C. NAACP President Dr. William J. Barber II, as the organization's complaint was filed on May 3, 2008.
The Institute for Southern Studies is clear about the seriousness of voter tampering:
It is also a Class I felony in North Carolina "to misrepresent the law to the public through mass mailing or any other means of communication where the intent and the effect is to intimidate or discourage potential voters from exercising their lawful right to vote."
