Our Women's Voices investigation: The backlash begins

Facing South's expose of the misleading and illegal voter outreach efforts in North Carolina and elsewhere by Women's Voices Women Vote has certainly made waves this week.

Since Tuesday, when we uncovered the group behind the mysterious robo-calls and connected it to problematic voter registration drives in at least 10 other states, the North Carolina Attorney General -- who in no uncertain terms deemed calls illegal -- issued a cease-and-desist order and demanded details about the script's authorship along with other materials for an investigation; Women's Voices stopped making the calls, which lacked legally required identification and misled the already-registered into thinking they weren't; MSHC Partners, the outreach firm that mailed registration packets to 276,000 voters timed to arrive just days before a critical primary but weeks past the mail-in deadline, is working with elections watchdog Democracy North Carolina to retrieve the offending materials from the postal system; and Women's Voices Board Member John Podesta has promised an internal investigation. Our findings have received widespread coverage by numerous media outlets including NPR, The Economist, and The Week.

Our reporting has also sparked controversy. Some have charged that it was unfair for us to question the close and disproportionate ties between Women's Voices and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

"[T]he lowest point I have ever seen the blogosphere sink," wrote Matt Stoller, a political consultant who blogs at OpenLeft.

"[G]oing immediately into hyper-paranoia-attack mode without even checking on the background of the people or group involved seems like more of what happened here," charged Women's Voices' Lux, also of OpenLeft.

"There may have been mistakes made in this particular registration drive in North Carolina, but Women's Voices, Women Vote's motives were not malicious or intended in any way to confuse voters," Board Member William McNary of USAction said in a statement posted to the group's website.

Also speaking up for Women's Voices' was James Rucker with Color of Change, whose work we respect enormously and have covered extensively here on Facing South. In a statement published on a number of Democratic blogs, Rucker said there were

"...clear errors in planning and execution on the part of Women's Voices Women's Votes, and those errors have led to a situation where Black voters in North Carolina may be dissuaded from voting in a hotly contested and important primary election. This is a major problem and point of concern. To continue in the important role they've played in past elections, Women's Voices Women's Votes must fix the damage done and prevent it from happening in the future -- working to restore the faith of the community protecting access to the vote by all people. It is essential that groups doing voter registration operate within the law and that they ensure that they do not confuse voters in to the process of doing their work.

At the same time, the accusations that the errors made by Women's Voices Women's Votes are part of a conspiracy to help Senator Clinton, appear to be false and reckless. Women's Voices Women's Votes has a history of registering voters of color, and the facts as we understand them, simply don't point to such a conspiracy. As Women's Voices Women's Votes takes deserved heat for whatever damage they've caused, it's not productive for them to be unfairly maligned as working to harm or help one of the presidential primary candidates.

As an organization that is tirelessly fighting voter suppression in the Black community where a history of disenfranchisement necessitates a raised level of scrutiny, we must take any accusations seriously, but in doing so rely on the facts.

We agree with Rucker that it's essential to "rely on the facts" -- and the facts of our report stand unchallenged. We do not now and have not ever charged that Women's Voices' actions were "part of a conspiracy to help Senator Clinton." As we wrote yesterday: "We don't suggest, and have no evidence to suggest, that Women's Voices is formally connected to the Clinton campaign. However, we do believe such close ties deserve scrutiny."

We stand by that assertion. If our search for mysterious robo-caller Lamont Williams had led us to not a Clinton-connected outfit but one with close ties to Republicans, would our critics expect us not to report that finding? Tax-exempt nonprofits engaged in voter-registration drives should expect to have their motives and political ties scrutinized -- especially when those drives raise serious concerns of vote suppression. It's the responsibility of leaders of nonprofits to avoid the appearance of impropriety, which did not happen in this case.

Unlike Rucker, McNary, Lux and others, we cannot so easily accept Women's Voices' claim that what occurred in North Carolina can be explained away as simple human error. This is an organization staffed, overseen and assisted by some of the most successful political operatives in the nation. If their repeated illegal and vote-suppressing actions in North Carolina and other states were an "error," it was an error so monumental as to verge on political malpractice -- hardly a mere boo-boo.

The fact is, the group's leaders have known for months now that their actions were causing serious problems for voters. As far back as November, the Arizona Secretary of State condemned the group's tactics as "misleading and deceptive." That same month, the Colorado Secretary of State said the group's mailings "caused confusion" and contained "misleading" information. Two and a half months before the organization began making illegal robo-calls to North Carolina voters, a similar effort in Virginia right before that state's primary resulted in a police investigation and and the group's promise to stop the practice -- a promise the group's leaders obviously failed to keep.

Women's Voices President Gardner clearly acknowledged that sending a mailing to 276,000 North Carolina voters that leads them to question their registration status would result in confusion. As she wrote in a letter faxed to North Carolina elections officials on Monday, April 28:

Unfortunately, North Carolina residents will receive this mail after the deadline for registering to vote to participate in the upcoming primary election. ... We hope this unfortunate coincidence in timing does not lead to any confusion or aggravation for either your state's voters or registrars.

"Unfortunate coincidence in timing?" If the group was aware that its mailing risked confusing voters before a critical primary, why didn't it simply delay it for a week and avoid the whole debacle?

With all due respect, we can't help but wonder where Podesta and Lux and McNary and the rest of the Women's Voices leaders were before this debacle in North Carolina. Why didn't they make sure these problems were fixed as soon as they were pointed out months ago -- before any voters in North Carolina were put at risk of disenfranchisement?