young African-American females? Or that WVWV specifically excluded young African-American females from their mailings/calls in KY and WV?

What exactly?

All of your explanations give them maximum benefit of the doubt, which is your prerogative. But I don't think it's backed up by the evidence.

Let's start with some basics:

First, I think all of the evidence points to the fact that they were consciously targeting a specific primary window: before the primary elections, but too late to actually register. All of their correspondence shows that they were aware of the "unfortunate coincidence" of their timing. They kept doing it even after people complained. And heck, these are seasoned pros who know the primary calendar. It was a deliberate choice of strategy.

So second, why would they do this? You say because they thought it was "a fertile period to harvest new voters." This is a reasonable explanation for them to give, and one their defenders repeat frequently. Makes sense: Interest in elections is high, good time to send out registration forms.

But then the problems with the argument start becoming clear:

(1) Wouldn't interest be pretty high 2 weeks earlier, when they could actually register for the primaries? Especially this year? Why intentionally (remember their letters to election officials) miss the deadline?

(2) If just registering voters was really the goal, why in North Carolina were they the only group that didn't pursue one-stop registration and voting?

(3) Does this at all address the question of their tactics, like anonymous robo-calls? Why different calls to different demographics, with differing levels of clarity?

(4) What's the cost/benefit analysis? Was the "bump" in registrations worth the chaos and confusion that resulted? They claim the impact has been "minimal," and you repeat that explanation without question. But the impact clearly hasn't been "minimal." The reported complaints alone are in the hundreds, if not thousands, nation-wide. And that's just who has REPORTED confusion.

(5) Those drawbacks to their strategy are especially relevant given that the registration numbers are likely highly inflated, because they are getting forms turned in from voters who are already registered (half of the sample from one Kentucky official we talked to).

I could go on, but I hope you see the point. All of this could have been predicted. I don't see how any of these could have been an "honest" "mistake."

I'll leave it to others to divine their motivations. But these and other details illustrate there's more at work than you or WVWV are letting on.

Maybe it's not nefarious. But it goes beyond the explanations you and WVWV are giving.