We learned earlier this week that an untold number of North Carolinians, less than a week before their Democratic presidential primary, have received automated calls, suggesting they’ll need to fill out a registration form before they vote.
“Hello, this is Lamont Williams,” the robo-call said. “In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return the voter registration form when it arrives. Thank you.” According to one report, the calls were directed at “black neighborhoods.”
The North Carolina state elections board, not surprisingly, is most unhappy about the calls, and has asked the public to help track down the source.
Facing South, however, has already identified the caller.
Facing South has confirmed the source of the calls, and the mastermind is Women’s Voices Women Vote, a D.C.-based nonprofit which aims to boost voting among “unmarried women voters.”
What’s more, Facing South has learned that the firestorm Women’s Voices has ignited in North Carolina isn’t the group’s first brush with controversy. Women’s Voices’ questionable tactics have spawned thousands of voter complaints in at least 11 states and brought harsh condemnation from some election officials for their secrecy, misleading nature and likely violations of election law.
Women’s Voices says this is a big misunderstanding. If so, it’s a pretty dramatic one.
Paul Kiel spoke with a representative of the group and moved the story forward.
The group’s spokeswoman Sarah Johnson confirmed to me that those were the group’s calls and said that they were part of an effort to register three million women voters in 24 states. The fact that the calls came shortly before the North Carolina primary, potentially confusing voters, was unfortunate mistake, she said. We’re “incredibly apologetic about the timing of this.” The group was simply working at such a “high volume” that it was “extremely difficult to tailor the mailing to every single state’s schedule,” she said. The calls precede the mailers, she said, because it increases the rate of response.
The group had also let the state board of elections know prior to sending out the mailings that they would be doing so, but the letter to the board did not mention the calls. […]
The group is currently in the process of halting the mailed packets, she said, at the request of the Democracy North Carolina and the state board of elections. The calls have also stopped.
As for why the group’s calls had used an apparently fictitious persona named “Lamont Williams,” Johnson first said, “as far as I know, it is a recorded message.” But when I asked why the group had used that name when there is no such person working with the group, she said she did not know why the name had been used.
Under normal circumstances, an aboveboard voter registration effort would start a robo-call by saying, “This is so-and-so from Women’s Voices, Women Vote and I’m calling to…” But that’s not what happened here; instead the robo-calls used a made-up person to leave messages and at least gave the impression that someone might need to complete some additional paperwork before voting.
The whole thing seems kind of odd, doesn’t it?