So yesterday, Daily Kos reported that some North Carolinians, most of whom, it seems, are African-American, were receiving robo-calls (which seem to be illegal for a couple of reasons) telling them they needed to send in voter registration packets they would be receiving in the mail. The caller was "Lamont Williams," and there was no identification of the number from which the calls were being made or identification of the organization responsible for the calls (part of the probable illegality). The deadline for registration has already past, so this mostly had the effect of confusing registered voters into possibly thinking they weren’t registered. Nothing like a little confusion right before an election, especially confusion among those who largely support Obama.
A little detective work, much of it enabled by the Daily Kos community, today turned up the callers, Women’s Voices Women Vote. These folks claim a mix of ineptitude and coincidence is to blame for these calls. But as the article over at Facing South explains, the organization has a pretty, shall we say, mixed reputation, having caused alarm and problems in several states, including Virginia, where the state police were investigating the calls for possible identity theft.
Such massive incompetence might be understandable if this was a get-out-the-vote effort organized by Mrs. Sanders’ sixth-grade Civics class. But the organization seems to be run by many people with large-scale political experience, and Women’s Voices appears to have a very large budget.
Oh, and there’s this:
"Some have also questioned the ties between Women’s Voices operatives and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton. Gardner, for example, contributed $2,500 to Clinton’s HILLPAC on May 4, 2006, and in March 2005 she donated a total of $4,200 to Clinton, according to The Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org. She has not contributed to the Obama campaign, according to the database.
"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."
I used to like Hillary Clinton (even though I supported Obama in the primary). But if her campaign is behind this, I have no respect left for her. The only appropriate punishment for such a thing is a forced change from Democrat to Republican. Say it ain’t so, Hillary.
