Very curious to see what kind of coverage this will get in the media, and I'm definitely not in the habit of accusing TPM of any sort of bias, I'm wondering why the possible Clinton links do not get any mention in Paul Kiel's article above. In the linked report, the possible ties to Clinton are given a couple of paragraphs, albeit at the tail end.

Some have also questioned the ties between Women's Voices operatives and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton. Gardner, for example, contributed $2,500 to Clinton's HILLPAC on May 4, 2006, and in March 2005 she donated a total of $4,200 to Clinton, according to The Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org. She has not contributed to the Obama campaign, according to the database.

Women's Voices Executive Director Joe Goode worked for Bill Clinton's election campaign in 1992 as a pollster; the group's website says he was intimately involved in "development and implementation of all polling and focus groups done for the presidential primary and general election campaigns" for Clinton.

Women's Voices board member John Podesta, former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, donated $2,300 to Hillary Clinton on April 19, 2007, according to OpenSecrets.org. Podesta also donated $1,000 to Barack Obama in July 2004, but that was well before Obama announced his candidacy for president.

"The reports from other states are very disturbing, especially the pattern of mass confusion among targeted voters on the eve of a state's primary," Democracy North Carolina's Bob Hall tells Facing South. "These are highly skilled political operatives -- something doesn't add up. Maybe it's all well-intended and explainable. At this moment, our first priority is to stop the robo-calls and prevent the chaos and potential disenfranchisement caused by this group sending 276,000 packets of registration forms into North Carolina a few days before a heated primary election. We need their immediate cooperation."

According to the web archive Maggie Williams, Clinton's campaign manager, was on the board last year.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070706100052/http://www.wvwv.org/aboutwvwv/index.cfm?id=3

Three things need to be determined:

1) Where were they getting their address/phone number database(s) (which had to have been correlated in order for them to do what they claim to be doing)?

2) How were they determining gender and marriage status?

3) Did the calls made in any way correlate to their claimed target demographic?

I think the interesting part of this story is the Clinton tie in...via Maggie Williams, John Podesta, and Michael Lux (and whoever else). I hope that TPM covers this...not just in the comments. Thanks.

(1) No way should the Clinton ties go unmentioned;

(2) Page Gardner claims these calls are an "attempt to encourage voter registration for those not registered for the general election this fall." We're asked to believe that experienced operatives are conducting a general election voter reg campaign six days before a state primary. This seems preposterous -- and if it's a mistake, as Gardner claims, then why does Facing South have material on similar up-against-the-deadline activities from other states -- including hotly contested Wisconsin in THIS CYCLE?

Cheating, on Team Hillary. 15 yards and loss of the nomination.

HRC supporters trying to suppress the black vote in North Carolina. Oh, that's charming! And how very Democratic...not. I hope Hillary Clinton comes out and denounces this ASAP. It's despicable.

Busted. Plain and simple, busted. The Maggie Williams connection clinches it. But I have a strong suspicion that nothing will come of this. Why? For the same reason that most people still don't know/care about the real story behind Florida 2000. If we can't get excited about tens of thousands of black voters getting purged from the roles in Florida, we sure as heck aren't going to get excited about some misleading phone calls designed to suppress the black vote in NC. "Lamont Williams"...puh-lease!

I received a call from this group before the 2004 election -- at least I think it was the same group, It was a "real person" call, but must have come from out of state, as the caller did not know much about Minnesota's voter registeration laws and processes. We can register on election day at the polls if you have proper ID or someone in the precinct who will vouch for you -- and any campaign to register new voters needs to be tailored to that circumstance.

I told the caller that the "best practice" for a registeration campaign is to do it locally. If you want to find your target group -- in this case unmarried women -- you need local knowledge to understand where that group will likely be found. You waste time and money by not properly targeting. For instance in my Legislative District we have the U of Minnesota, and thus a very large mobile population that needs to have the opportunity to properly register. With some trained volunteers, I can follow all the rules and get into student housing on a slow night, and pick up hundreds of registeration cards in a few hours. Any group can be properly and economically targeted -- but it needs to be based on local residential and other patterns.

So is this guy "Lamont Williams" a relative of "Lamont Sanford", as long as we are talking about fictional characters?

WOMEN'S VOICES Leadership Team
Page S. Gardner, Founder and President, WVWV
Joe Goode, Executive Director, WVWV
Ruth Ferguson, Chief Finance Officer, WVWV
Nancy McDonald, Resource Development Director, WVWV
Hal Malchow, President, MSHC Partners
Pat Griffin, Griffin Williams Critical Point Management
MAGGIE WILLIAMS, Griffin Williams Critical Point Management

Directors
Page S. Gardner, Founder and President, WVWV
Ashley James, Student Activist, De Paul University
Michael Lux, President, American Family Voices
Mimi Mager, Partner, Heidepriem & Mager
John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress
Margaret Rheinstein, Community Activist

Advisory Board
Chair - Barbara Lee, RW
Patricia Bauman
Heather Booth
Chris Desser
Anna Greenberg
Anne Hess
Richard Plepler
Ruth Skovron
Gloria Steinem
WVWV Legal Counsel

So a group with strong ties to the Clinton campaign is innocently performing the following:

1) Calling AA households days before each primary
2) For the purpose of registering said households for the general election
3) Without making any distinction between the general and the primary
4) Without identifying itself and while using number blocking
5) Thereby creating confusion for the voters. Unintentionally, of course.

Does that make anyone else a little sick to their stomachs, or is it just me?

sarahWVWV,

As a member of WVWV, perhaps you could explain how something like this could happen. Though, I'm sure we all appreciate you copying and pasting the organization's mission statement for us.

Bridger