North Carolina: "Women's Voices, Women Vote" in hot water over robo-calls
The Washington Post reports: Women's Voices, Women Vote is one of those little advocacy organizations with a lot of big names attached: Former White House chief of staff John Podesta is a board member, Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams has consulted, and founder Page Gardner worked for the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign, to name a few.
But for all the paid and unpaid talent associated with the group, which focuses on registering unmarried women to vote, it's landed in legal hot water in North Carolina for robo-calling voters after the primary registration date and for not identifying the group in the call.
Voters and watchdog groups complained about the calls, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered them to stop on Wednesday. Some saw a turnout-suppression conspiracy because the group's allies include so many Clinton supporters, especially Podesta and Williams.
On Friday, Barack Obama's campaign weighed in by circulating the transcript of a National Public Radio report on the calls. It noted that the North Carolina calls seemed to heavily skew to African Americans, including many women who had already registered, causing them to question whether they were eligible to vote in the primary on Tuesday.
In a statement released on its Web site, the group explains that the calls were part of a general-election outreach effort in 24 states and coincided with mailings that conveyed a similar "hurry up and register" message. But in other states as well, the mailings and calls were placed after primary registration deadlines had passed, sowing confusion and leading to other legal complaints against the group. -- Women's Voices, Women Vote: Did the Outreach Overreach? - washingtonpost.com