Voter suppression on the Left
I’ve been remiss in blogging about the extraordinary story of voter suppression by the Left in North Carolina. It appears to be a case of Hillary-supporting women’s activists placing confusing robo-calls to erode black voter turnout and hurt Barack Obama. The North Carolina attorney general has now put a stop to the calls by “Women’s Voices, Women Vote.”
If conservatives were behind such an effort, the nutroots would be splashing KKK photoshops of the culprits all over their blogs and the NYTimes would be demanding that the Justice Department open up a probe and Henry Waxman would be flooding the zone with subpoenas.
Facing South first broke the story on Wednesday.
Don Surber has a good round-up:
Reports out of North Carolina is that robo telephone calls to black precincts include this message:
“Hello. This is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter-registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is fill it out, sign it, date and return your application. Then, you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return your registration form when it arrives. Thank you.”
The News-Observer in Raleigh reported: “State elections officials are asking for the public’s help in identifying the source of misleading and potentially illegal robocalls.”
Now NPR has connected the calls to the Women’s Voices, Women Vote, a tax-exempt group (NPR erroneously labeled it a charity) that is supposed to be nonpartisan but it registers single women and has ties to liberal candidates.
“Will Evans of the Center for Investigative Reporting, who collaborated in reporting this story, found some Obama backers among the Women’s Voices leadership, but the group mostly has ties to Clinton and her campaign. Gardner worked on former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Board member John Podesta was President Clinton’s chief-of-staff. Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, used to be on the Women’s Voices leadership team and did consulting work for the group,” NPR reported.
I oppose an investigation into this intramural battle because taxpayer money should not be wasted policing a Democratic Party food fight.
As a retired pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago may put it, this is chickens coming home to roost for the Democratic Party’s years of identity politics.
Indeed, the liberal mouthpiece NPR could not resist a cheap shot at Republicans in its report when it is the Democrats who are doing this.
This is not the first time this group has been accused of rolling out Lamont Williams to prey on black voters. NPR cited similar calls in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin at various times.
Shaun Mullen excoriates “Jackboot Feminism:”
WVWV president Page Gardner has apologized for any “confusion” caused by her group.
But it is obvious that Gardner is playing the news media and others for suckers because the more we learn about the high-tech suppression effort the more obvious it becomes that it was black North Carolinians whom the women’s advocacy group was trying to confuse in the service of getting one of their own elected — a proclaimed feminist who like them has mastered the manly art of dirty politics.
As Facing South reported in detail, Women’s Voice, Women’s Voice has racked up quite a record of misleading voters:
…since last November, in at least 11 states nationwide, Women’s Voices — sometimes working through its Voter Participation Center project — has developed a checkered reputation, drawing rebukes from leading election officials and complaints from thousands of would-be voters as a result of their secretive tactics, deceptive mailings and calls, and penchant for skirting or violating the law. For example:
* In Arizona last November, election officials were “inundated with complaints” after Women’s Voices sent a mailing erroneously claiming that recipients were “required” to mail back an enclosed voter registration form. Many who received the mailing were already registered; the mailing also gave the wrong registration date. Secretary of State Jan Brewer denounced the group’s tactics as “misleading and deceptive.” A similar mailing in Colorado that month “[drew] fire and caused confusion,” according to a state press release.
* In Wisconsin, state officials singled out Women’s Voices for misleading and possibly disenfranchising voters, stating in a press release [PDF]: “One group in particular — Women’s Voices. Women Vote, of Washington, D.C. — apparently ignored or disregarded state deadlines in seeking to register voters,” sending in registrations past the January 30 deadline and causing “hundreds of Wisconsin voters who think they registered in advance” to actually not be.
* Michigan officials ended up “fielding tons of calls from confused voters” after Women’s Voices did a February mailing to “380,000 unmarried women” — including numerous deceased voters and even more that were already registered. Sarah Johnson of Women’s Voices “seemed confused by the confusion,” the Lansing State Journal reported.
* A 1.5 million-piece Women’s Voices mailing in Florida falsely stated: “To comply with state voting requirements, please return the enclosed application.” Pasco County’s elections supervisor called it “disingenuous”; another said it created “a lot of unnecessary panic on behalf of the voters,” reported local newspapers. Sarah Johnson of Women’s Voice said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
* By March, Women’s Voices was backing off the erroneous “registration is required” language, but there were still problems. For example, a mailing in Arkansas allowed that “registering to vote is voluntary,” but a clerk in Washington County reported that “the majority [of forms] sent back to the county come from registered voters, causing needless labor for office employees.”
Problems with the group’s tactics have also been documented in Louisiana, Kentucky and Ohio.
In each state, the Women’s Voices campaigns have brought the same news and the same themes, again and again: Deceptive claims and misrepresentations of the law — sometimes even breaking the law. Wildly inaccurate mailing lists, supposedly aimed at “unregistered single women,” but in reality reaching many registered voters as well as families, deceased persons and pets. Tactics that confuse voters and potentially disenfranchise them.
For such a sophisticated and well-funded operation, which counts among its ranks some of the country’s most seasoned political operatives, such missteps are peculiar, as is the surprise expressed by Women’s Voices staff after each controversy.
Sweetness & Light: “That we are funding such blatant politicking is the real scandal here.”
It’s about time someone in Congress challenge the group’s tax-exempt status.
Anyone?
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- Don Surber » Blog Archive » Liberal Klan
- (Update) Jackboot Feminism: New Details Emerge On WVWV's Voter Suppression Scandal
- Dems 2008: Are Clintonites suppressing the vote in NC? [Karl]
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Categories: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Voter fraud
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We’re all Chicagoans now?
There’s no such thing as voter supression if a Democrat does it. It’s called a liberation movment.
Hmmmmmm…sounds like a bunch of what Marty Parrish claimed McCain called his wife
this isn’t surprising at all. just for fun, i put in the words “guilty” and “voter registration” into a google search, and the articles were all about ACORN.
why is this organization allowed to exist?
are tax payers paying for their existence?
by the way…we still have yet to have the MSM dig up those Floridians kept away from the polls by angry dogs and fire hoses. but i guess we always know faceless, nameless, evil, white, male conservatives are to blame.
“Bawk, Bawk, Bwaaawk.” Chickens.
Anything goes with the Democrats. They’ll do whatever they think they can get away with, using the Constitution as their protection. Then, if they lose they’ll try to distort the Constitution to try to overturn their loss. It will be costly this year to bus around all those excited young lawyers.
Well, Saul Alisky is alive and well apparently. His tactics are getting around.
I thought that voter fraud was a felony. I suppose it’s only a felony is a Conservative Republican does it. If a Liberal Democrat does it, then it’s called “empowerment”.
Isn’t the Internal Revenue Service responsible for policing the nonprofits and keeping them on the ethical straight and narrow? Or is the IRS whining about personnel shortages?
Funny, that is how some of us feel about funding the RNC. “Blatant politicking” got us McCain and the RNC begging for funds.
Agreed. Along with the wrong Rev. Wrights church too.
The Democratic Party’s legacy of voter fraud continues. Without it I doubt if they would ever win an election. I guess there is no use in holding my breath for anyone in authority to ever do anything about it.
prosecute them. or do they have friends to deal with that too?
If a Republican group did this you would deny it up and down. They have and you have. Maybe you should point out that the people who exposed this were liberal bloggers.
Is there no limit to the low the democrats won’t stoop to win an election? I yearn for the good old days when politicians went stump thumping for votes, and their Platforms were made up of several planks called promises.Now the platforms are made up of many bribes and lies.
lgm,
If anyone did this, I cant say I would cover it up. Truth is what it is, afterall.
Does it matter what party these people represent? corruption and lies should be routed out and dealt with, regardless of ones politics.
Well, There you go again…that’s what happens when you give woman the vote….KIDDING….chill…It’s the “Republicans vote on Tuesday and the Democrats vote on Wednesday” deja vu….all over again..
abstractmind, don’t hold your breath waiting for a reply. To the best of my knowledge, lgm has yet to offer anything constructive on these threads. His only purpose seems to be attempting to cause confusion and chaos. Better to just ignore him. Right now, he’s in the middle of conducting his indoctrination session on unsuspecting young minds.
Voter fraud was so easy in the old days. Sigh!
Uncle Ed Crump, political boss extraordinaire, ran the city of Memphis. Come election day, all he had to do was send his cronies in pickup trucks across the river to Arkansas, load up with “voters” (at a few dollars a head), and haul them back to Memphis, where they dutifully exercised their constitutional right to vote.
Funny, Dimocraps have been accusing Repubs of this for 7 years now. Remember how we kept Dems from voting for Gore and Kerry? During the Gore run, who was making it almost impossible for the military service persons votes count? Dems!
You had us at Boo freakin hoo.
lgm said:
What is this third grade?
Your only reporting this because you hate WOMEN! /sarc
If a Republican group did this,us other Republicans would make them pay like the other Republicans who broke the law and moral code. What’s the latest status on democrat Jefferson? Sure has been quite, hasn’t it?
If you want to know what liberals are thinking and doing, just listen to what they accuse conservatives of thinking and doing.
It really is that easy.
Election fraud, intimidation and thuggery are leftist staples they will never win without them. We are still a ways off from the general election so we haven’t seen a lot of fascist thuggery yet but its coming. This stuff is only a crime for us people, leftists can’t really be considered people in the normal sense of the word so therefore no charges. Everyone seems to be ignoring it but all the signs are there the left is heading for a major meltdown, a divided house cannot stand.
soaps-
If I recall VP al gore came up with multiple pages of ways to disqualify absentee ballots and one of the ways if there was no bar code on edge-then the ballot was DQ’d.
Sadly at the time, most of the overseas military bases, and our ships didn’t have that kind of technology for the mail and alot of us from FL wondered if our votes counted at all.
GSP
“Little Ma - Your post on Memphis politics was fine except for one thing. There is “no constitutional right to vote”.
Incorrect. I’d be for holding their feet to the fire just the same, unless there was good reason to believe the story wasn’t on the up and up.
Corruption shouldn’t be tolerated, regardless of party. You’d have alot more respect around here if instead of shouting “I know you are but what am I?”, you admitted the obvious. . .that this is bad and should be stopped. You seem incapable of doing so when it’s Democrats on the line though, which puts your hypocrisy in stark relief.
A few things.
What kind of lists are generated at the local level that includes pet names?
As for being well-funded, I think it would be prudent to follow the money on this one…and not just the taxpayer dollars being used.
It takes some serious ching to do the huge mailings in multiple states as described. Whose mountain of cash is behind this?
Who are the political operatives behind this? Not only are the mailings likely expensive, but I doubt these “political operatives” are working for free.
Name some names.
I know you aren’t holding your breath for one of the Washington insiders to step up to the plate, Michelle. *sigh*
How about George Soros?
Michelle did cite the source that broke it, lgm.
Try reading everything for once, instead of continually trying to derail a thread.
I find it funny. If someone was to take wild guesses on a subject in form of right or wrong, the laws of probability would suggest they would be right 50% of the time in the long run.
So how can it be that you are right (correct) 5% of the time???
You should take up gambling and vote the opposite of what you think.
duff65, #26
You know that, and I know that; but in the ’30s and ’40s the poor old dirt farmers in Arkansas believed what they were told.
But thanks for calling me on it. I should have put “their constitutional right to vote” in quotation marks.
Yes it most certanly is every bit that easy.
Well I guess the alien invasion is over, we have the old mathboy, oic keyboard warrior brigade back.
LGM LGM
Why don’t you? You’re the self-proclaimed liberal, you may know that best. So show us some links!
And when did republicans do this? I’ve never heard of them doing this.
Looks like you’ve got some homework to do, LGM.
So, by once again attempting to change the subject or make it a Republican issue, you are denying that this happened because liberals did it, right?
Clean up your own house before you reflexively come after Republicans.
And while you are at it, put an end to voting by Democrat cadavers and endless recounts until they get the result they want (remember Gregoire?). Oh yeah, disenfranchising overseas soldiers is not too nice either. And “finding” boxes of previously uncounted ballots. And double voting snowbirds. And handing out cigarettes to bums to get them to vote for you. And the Kennedy crime family: just make them go away (check out the history of opponents to Kennedy, particularly the black ones).
But anyway, back to the Tom and Jerry Show, Democrat version.