blogger interrupted

Chris Kromm at Kos is reporting that the voter suppression calls into NC right now, and which were deployed in Ohio last fall, have come from Women’s Voices Women Votes, a non-profit whose board is packed with Clinton supporters.

What’s more, Facing South has learned that the firestorm Women’s Voices has ignited in North Carolina isn’t the group’s first brush with controversy. Women’s Voices’ questionable tactics have spawned thousands of voter complaints in at least 11 states and brought harsh condemnation from some election officials for their secrecy, misleading nature and likely violations of election law.

We here in the Ohio are familiar with WVWV, because Jill Miller Zimon spent about a month emailing all of us to campaign to be voted their best female blogger. Good thing for Jill she didn’t win. But she knows all about WVWV.

Please keep an eye on WVWV - they have great materials targeted to unmarried women, but also useful for anyone who is interested in eradicating inequalities that persist as a result of being female.

Well, turns out keeping an eye on WVWV really was a good idea. And just how are black males unmarried women?

There are other questions about Women’s Voices’ outreach efforts. Although the group purports to be targeting “unmarried women,” their calls and mailings don’t fit the profile. Kevin Farmer in Durham, who first recorded the call, is a white male. Many of the recipients are African-American; Rev. Nelson Johnson, who is a married, male and African-American, reported that his house was called four times by the mysterious “Lamont Williams.”

And the fun part? It’s a felony.

The calls are also probably illegal. Farmer and others have told Facing South the calls use a blocked phone number and provided no contact information — a violation of North Carolina rules regulating “robo-calls” (N.C. General Statute 163-104(b)(1)c). N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper further stated in a recent memo that the identifying information must be clear enough to allow the recipient to “complain or seek redress” — something not included in the calls.

It is also a Class I felony in North Carolina “to misrepresent the law to the public through mass mailing or any other means of communication where the intent and the effect is to intimidate or discourage potential voters from exercising their lawful right to vote.”

And the MORE fun part? WVWV is a Clinton beehive.

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.

Thanks for the heads up, Jill!

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