Women's Voices Women Vote, a nonprofit group with deep ties to Hillary Clinton, is at it again, creating voter confusion in West Virginia just ahead of the state's primary. Despite the fact that WVWV has generated complaints in numerous states over the past six months about tactics that confuse and suppress voters, despite the fact that it has been warned about its misleading and deceptive methods by numerous state and law enforcement officials in many states, despite the fact that WVWV is currently under investigation by the North Carolina Attorney General, WVWV just continues to sow voter confusion. The latest state is West Virginia, where the West Virginia Secretary of State issued a warning on Friday that WVWV's recent mailing could cause voter confusion ahead of the state's primary next week.
As I diaried last week, in state after state, WVWV has sent out voter registration robocalls and mailings that were suspiciously timed to reach voters after the state's primary registration deadline had passed but before the primary was held. Some of the group's robocalls, such as the infamous Lamont Williams robocall that was targeted to African Americans in North Carolina (as well as in other states), strongly implied that the person receiving the call was not yet registered to vote, even though many people who received the call were, in fact, registered to vote.
In West Virginia, the group sent out a mailing with similar suspicious timing:
The Secretary of State's office is reminding first-time voters that the deadline to register to vote in Tuesday's primary already has passed.
Betty Ireland said she's worried that a mass mailing aimed at getting young women in West Virginia to register to vote might cause confusion.
A group called "Women's Voices. Women Vote" sent out more than 16,000 mailers to unmarried women in the state after April 22, the last day to register in time to vote Tuesday[...]
"I do not want registered voters to be confused by this mailing," Ireland said. "If you were already registered to vote, you do not need to re-register."
There is already evidence that WVWV's latest mailing in West Virginia has caused confusion among voters. The West Virginia Secretary of State's office said it has received "a batch of voter registration forms as a result of the group's mass mailing, and many of them were from people already registered." Clearly, some people who were already registered to vote thought that they were not registered, and they sent in their registration forms after the primary deadline. So it is entirely possible that some of these folks may think they did not send in their registration form in time for the primary and may stay away from the polls. And many other registered voters who have not sent in new registration forms could also reach the same conclusion.
In response to the confusion in West Virginia, WVWV did what it has done in every other state: apologize for the confusion and claim that it was all unintended. WVWV's founder and president, Page Gardner (who is a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton and served as as deputy politcal director for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and presidential transition team) issued a letter regarding its West Virginia mailing that included the following statement:
West Virginia residents will receive this mail after the deadline for registering to vote to participate in the upcoming primary election. Please be aware that the mailing is not intended to encourage registration specifically for the primary, but simply to encourage voter registration in general.
The mailing clearly indicates that the deadline to register to vote by mail for a particular election in West Virginia is 20 days before the election ... We hope that this unfortunate coincidence in timing does not lead to any confusion or aggravation for either your state's voters or registrars."
Several things trouble me about WVWV's response:
- First, after WVWV's deceptive practices came to light in North Carolina, some people defended WVWV by arguing that the post-primary deadline is actually the most successful time to register voters, because it is when people are paying attention to elections and voting. This now appears to be WVWV's official line: they claim that they are not trying to register voters for the primaries, but to "encourage voter registration in general." But as
Adam B noted the other day, when you're consistently and knowingly confusing voters and angering state elections boards, it's clearly counterproductive to suppress and confuse voters on one hand in order to register other voters on the other hand.
- Second, Gardner described their mailing as an "unfortunate coincidence in timing." Huh? In the previous paragraph Gardner makes it clear that WVWV intended to send out the mailing right after the primary registration deadline had passed, so how could this timing be an "unfortunate coincidence? WVWV itself is admitting that the timing of the mailing was planned and intentional, so why is Gardner talking out of both sides of her mouth here?
- Third, Gardner says that she hopes that this unfortunate coincidence in timing "does not lead to any confusion or aggravation for either your state's voters or registrars." I find this statement utterly impossible to swallow. As I said before, WVWV has been warned for many months that its activities were leading to confusion and aggravation among both voters and registrars. Last NOVEMBER,
Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer denounced the group's tactics as "misleading and deceptive." And the group has been warned by many other state officials, including in
Arkansas,
Colorado,
Louisiana,
Michigan,
Virginia, and
Wisconsin, as well as in Kentucky and Ohio. So I find it quite galling that WVWV is trying to claim it had no idea its latest mailing in West Virgina would cause similar confusion. It knew this would happen but did it anyway.
One final note: In North Carolina, one major criticism of WVWV's deceptive tactics was that the group was targeting African American voters, men and women, married and unmarried, even though the group claims that it is solely focused on "one goal in mind: Improving unmarried women's participation in the electorate and policy process." This created tremendous and justifiable concern, since a group with deep ties to Hillary Clinton appeared to be trying to suppress voters among a demographic group that was more likely to support Hillary Clinton's opponent, and this demographic group was not even part of its mission.
However, as far as we can tell so far, the group's activities in West Virginia appear to be limited to targeting unmarried women. So perhaps WVWV realized that it needed to back off its efforts to target African Americans, at least for a while, until the dust settles (and West Virginia does not have a huge African American population anyway). But at the very least, WVWV's actions in West Virginia are a sign of continued incompetence at best. In my humble view, an organization that uses tactics that it knows will confuse and possibly suppress some voters in order to register other voters has no business being involved in voter registration efforts in any way.