The point of this diary is not to make claims one way or the other as to the maliciousness or legality of the robocalls. I’m just adding another chapter to the growing story of WVWV’s (sadly somewhat effective, but still ham-handed) PR campaign to tamp down this scandal. This diary is about the cover up, not the crime.
For more details, see my last two diarieson this topic. Also, see davidkc’s diaryon the North Carolina NAACP’s official complaint about the robocalling activities.
The Backstory
For those who haven’t followed this story, on April 24 and 25, WVWV apparently made over 180,000 robocalls in North Carolina. The NC Department of Elections started getting complaints about these confusing, anonymous calls from a "Lamont Williams" who made it sound as if people couldn't vote until they’d signed, dated, and returned a voter registration packet. This despite the fact that the register-by-mail deadline for NC's high-profile primary had already passed; many recipients of the call were registered voters; and it wasn't too late to register and vote in person for the primary.
On Monday, April 28, the Raleigh News & Observer reported on these calls, and said the state board of elections was looking for more information as to who placed them. Later that day, WVWV got in touch with the board to let them know they were the responsible party, but still didn't identify themselves publicly. On Tuesday, April 29, the controversy got traction on Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and other places online.
WVWV Comes Forward
It wasn’t until Wednesday, April 30, that WVWV came forward to the public and took responsibility for the calls. That same day, the NC Attorney General launched an investigation into WVWV's calling activities.
That day, WVWV president Page Gardner posted an article on Huffington Post explaining that the calls came from her organization, and that they were made to coincide with a massive mailing of over 200,000 voter registration forms to NC residents. Her article said the robocalls and mailings were part of a general election strategy, and pointed to a letter (pdf) dated April 24, 2008 to the NC Board of Elections and a suspiciously undated press release (pdf), both of which made it seem like WVWV was very aware that the mailings could cause people to be confused by their timing. (As of Wednesday, April 30, the NC Board of Elections still hadn’t received the letter by mail – although they did have a faxed version, sent Monday afternoon. Many people assume it was not, in fact, mailed on April 24, but rather created on Monday to make it seem as if they had covered every angle regarding deadlines.) This statement, which also was emailed Wednesday afternoon to bloggers including Pam Spaulding, included the odd sentence:
"A copy of the [Board of Elections] letter and a press release sent to North Carolina media announcing the registration effort is attached."
Embarrassingly, there was no such attachment on the HuffPost article, nor was there on the WVWV page that had the statement (it's since been hilariously updated, see the redundant last sentence of the statement) but there was in the email sent to TPM and others.
The Undated North Carolina Press Release
Now, Gardner's language ("press release sent to North Carolina media announcing the registration effort") makes it look as if the press release was sent in advance of the registration effort ... prior to the controversy. In fact, however, the press release was almost certainly created on Monday, April 28-—AFTER media in NC and bloggers started asking a whole lot of questions. I called WVWV to find out what date it came out (since it was undated) and she said she believed Monday, but would have Sarah Johnson get back to me. Needless to say, she hasn’t called. Oddly enough, the press release also wasn't on WVWV's website, nor had it been picked up by any NC media!
Please note that press releases are NEVER undated. Ever. Unless someone does it in a very slipshod manner, or wants to create confusion around when it was released.
The press release, like their letter to the Board of Elections, makes it seem as if WVWV was fully aware of all the confusion that the mailings could cause, and made sure to include details that don’t appear in their robocalls or mailings, such as:
Residents who are eligible to register for the primary but missed the deadline may still register and vote through the state’s One-Stop Absentee Sites. Qualified residents may register and vote at their county designated One-Stop Site from 19 to 3 days before Election Day.
UPDATE: THEY HAVE SINCE UPDATED THEIR WEBSITE TO RETROACTIVELY INCLUDE A THE NORTH CAROLINA PRESS RELEASE! In fact, it's the ONLY article on both their Press Releases page and their News Articles page!
AND UNLIKE BEFORE, IT'S NOW DATED!!
The new date on the release is April 28 (if you check the link from TPM, the date wasn't there before), and every other press release since this controversy erupted was posted the day it went out, but I promise you, it wasn’t posted there Wednesday evening, April 30, as you can tell by my comment on TPM Muckraker: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem... I’ve made a number of similar comments on blogs such as Open Left about the fact that the press release was undated and didn’t appear on their site. Obviously, someone paid attention.
They are creating a paper trail to make it look like this was all part of a plan, when in fact it is all after-the-fact, poorly executed CYA activity. And now they have a blatant contradiction - why did they lead us to believe they'd sent out a press release prior to Monday? And it raises the obvious question of when the letter to the NC Board of elections was really created. I don't think it was April 24.
Also, why is the North Carolina press release on their "press releases" page, but not the Colorado one?
The Colorado Press Release
See, on Wednesday, as part of their cover up, WVWV posted on their home page and News page an article entitled "CO Voter Registration." As I am a Colorado native, this piqued my interest.
Turns out, the posting was a reprint of an article (in its entirety, without stated permission, in seeming violation of copyright) from the Craig Daily Press. Craig, for those of you who don’t know, is a tiny town in the upper right corner of Colorado, notable mostly for not being close to any other towns whatsoever. I found it odd that the local paper happened to run an article (without a byline) on Wednesday about WVWV’s voter registration efforts that was then immediately reposted on the WVWV home page.
The article, though using numbers specific to Colorado (e.g., number of unregistered, unmarried women voters in Colorado), was otherwise IDENTICAL to the then-undated North Carolina press release, which wasn't at the time on their site.
So on Thursday, May 1, I called the paper and spoke to the editor. He confirmed to me that the article was, in fact, a reprint of a press release, dated April 29 (the day AFTER the NC press release), emailed to the Craig paper by WVWV, and that it read "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE" and "contact Sarah Johnson." He didn't know if it was e-mailed to any other papers. It’s not uncommon or unethical for newspapers looking for content to simply reprint press releases. It was posted as something that might interest readers, under the heading "Craig Breifs."
In other words, even as the blogosphere was exploding around them regarding their mailing activities and phone calls, even as they were in the middle of having to answer questions from the NC Department of Elections and the Attorney General, they still found time to craft, email out, and repost a press release with Colorado-specific information in it.
Amazingly, this press release was picked up by only one paper in Colorado – the tiny Craig Daily Press, and in their online edition only. It STILL hasn't been picked up by any other papers in Colorado. The North Carolina press release similarly was picked up by ZERO North Carolina papers. Nor is there any sign of similar press releases that corresponded to previous mass mailings in other states in November or February.
Moreover, the (dated) Colorado press release isn’t listed on their press release page (even though the NC one now is, since I started pointing out its phantom nature)! It was obviously never meant to actually get WVWV's information to the public, but rather to provide support for their contention that nothing that happened in North Carolina was unusual, not even the bizarre undated press release they sent to bloggers (but neglected to put on their own site) to convince them that they were ahead of the game in NC.
What about the other 22 states?
A simple question will demonstrate how shameless they are. Where are the 22 other press releases?
If they thought it wise to create a North Carolina press release and then tailor a second press release for Colorado, and if (as they told the Kos community) their April mailing was targeting 24 states simultaneously, surely they also sent out 22 other press releases containing information on the number of unmarried women in, say, Ohio, Washington, and Wisconsin, right? And sent them to 24 different sets of media in each of these states. Imagine how much staff time would have had to go into such a plan! Imagine how UTTERLY DISAPPOINTING that despite all the country, only ONE tiny newspaper in a tiny town in a low-population corner of Colorado decided it was worth printing – and then, only online! Even though they were in the news this week more than they have been in their group's entire history, no other paper in the entire country picked up on any of their 24 distinct press releases! Not even in North Carolina, where the controversy first erupted!! Just do a Google News search on a key phrase like "We’re in the midst of a sea change in our country, as we’re seeing a new America emerge right before our eyes," and you'll see.
If my press person spent that much time and energy into 24 press releases that got near-zero pick up even as she was getting constant calls from bloggers, reporters, and the general public, I’d at least hope the press releases would mention the robocalls that are causing so much confusion. But sadly, neither the NC nor the CO press releases mentioned them, even though Sarah Johnson told Daily Kos that the calls were done in ALL 24 STATES ON APRIL 24 AND 25!
Folks, we’re being lied to. Obviously, the Colorado article was a plant in order to make it seem as if WVWV was rolling out an effective major press strategy to coincide with the mailings and the robocalls. In fact, no such press strategy really exists, just the one intended to fool the blogosphere into thinking that everything in NC was on the up-and-up. And, sadly, it seems to be working.
Other Questions
There are still many questions yet to be answered by WVWV about the robocalls. Exactly how many went to men, how many went to women, and what lists did they use to get these numbers? They have claimed that on April 24 & 25, calls went out to ALL of their target states. Does this include Virginia, where they were contacted by the state police in February, and said they’d stop the anonymous robocalls on a national level? Does it include Colorado? Was Lamont Williams used in Colorado for reaching their male targets (other than my dad, there’s not a huge number of African Americans in Colorado)? If they used Lamont for African American men and the female one for "unmarried women," which did they use for African American, unmarried women? Why not call people back, as Adam B suggested, with clarifications about the prior call, and clarify that people could have registered to vote and voted in the primary until yesterday?
More questions also exist about their mailings in Colorado. Why don't they use the state's official Voter File, as requested by the Secretary of State in an unprecedented admonishing press release? It would be the perfect way to weed out already-registered voters! In a conversation with Rich Coolidge (Director of Communications for the Colorado Secretary of State) on Thursday, he confirmed that they have not done so, even though WVWV's Colorado press release says the following:
To identify voter registration application recipients, Women’s Voices Women Vote uses a sophisticated matching process that compares a consumer data file with the Colorado file of registered voters.
Why has WVWV Executive Director Joe Goode failed to return Coolidge’s calls, not to mention calls from the state’s Director of Elections and the Deputy Director of Elections? Why didn't the staff tell the WVWV board about having been admonished by Colorado, Arizona, and several other states (as Mike Lux confirmed in an email to me on Friday)? Why did the staff at the Secretary of State's office have to spend days sorting the thousands of voter registration forms returned to them, many from confused/angry registered voters, and then mail them (at taxpayer expense) to the appropriate places – the 64 county clerk offices?
I sincerely hope more bloggers and media will follow up on this story. WVWV trotted out so many good people, surrogates, to vouch for their good deeds and integrity, and now those people are having their reputations besmirched. There are so many inconsistencies in WVWV’s story that they’re practically begging for an expose. I hope this diary can help others as they continue to ask questions and delve into this cover up.
And I deeply hope that Mike Lux and other WVWV board members give us a full accounting of what they knew about WVWV’s deceptive practices in state after state, and when they knew it.
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