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So what is Women's Voices really up to?
Daily Kos has the latest in the WVWV controversy here.
The whole thing sounds really crazy to me. DairyStateMom got one of their forms in the mail last week, months after she voted in our primary. The Kos item linked above says that they appear to be pretty indiscriminate about how they get people registered:
Guy Zeigler, clerk of the Franklin County Board of Elections in
Frankfort, Ky., estimates that about half of the forms from Women's
Voices that are returned to his office come from people who are already
properly registered to vote -- raising questions about how the
nonprofit measures its success.
In West Virginia, Secretary of State Betty Ireland issued a press releaseSo the whole thing is goofy, but what is the real agenda, do you think? I've been running one hypothesis after another through my pea-brain and can't make sense of it.
[pdf] on Thursday, May 8 cautioning voters about Women's Voices
"potentially misleading" registration efforts. The warning came after
the organization began mailing voter registration forms to more than
16,000 unmarried women across the state right before the primary election, but after the April 22 deadline to register for that election
had already passed.
Are they
1) Well meaning but inept?
2) Well meaning and clever? (If so, explain how this is really clever.)
3) Up to no good and clever? (So then what is their real intent and agenda?)
4) Up to no good and inept? (And if so, what will the real impact be, intended or not?)
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Comments (19)
And if anyone knows how to do block quotes in posts without the weird line breaks, pass on the news!
May 13, 2008 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I make it a habit to take anything I compose in Word and paste into a Notepad (plain text) document before copying it again and pasting it into the blog entry box. Dunno why, but the blog software here carries over some of the formatting from word processing software. Give that a try before applying blockquotes to text you paste in the blog window.
May 13, 2008 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whenever there are two or more paragraphs to a quote, I backspace the gaps out, then put the paragraph breaks back in. This gets rid of the hiddden code that seems to carry over when you cut and paste.
May 14, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd say it's either 3 or 4.
And if anyone knows how to do block quotes period, I'd like to learn that.
May 13, 2008 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
For block quotes in a post, there are buttons above the writing space. Write the quote, then highlight it and click on the block quotes button.
In a comment, however, use HTML tags before and after the block quote.
May 13, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is quite simply meant to confuse.
The fact that they're continuing in West Virginia & Kentucky might be an effort to cover their tracks & continue a claim that there is nothing nefarious about what they're doing. The ties to the Clinton camp wreak. The "contract" work hired out to spouses wreaks of nepotism & political cover. We really need to start calling a spade a spade (no color reference implied). The most important things right now are common good & principal. We must advance progressive democracy & the only way to do it is through overwhelming numbers (voter turn out). That's why the drive going on in the Obama camp gives me hope (yeah, I used the H word).
May 13, 2008 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, so you're saying the current stuff is just to make them look inept. Sort of like the guy who targets one person to kill, then kills a bunch of other people randomly to cover up the crime by making it look like the work of a serial killer. (I'm not sure where I got that one...)
And agreed on the nepotism thing... Maybe that was the real goal -- just to create jobs for some people who would get paid to look like they were doing something...?
May 13, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe they are not well meaning and clever. However, they are probably well meaning overall. If you register Democrats for the General, all the while confusing them for the primary- to the advantage of former employer candidates- its a two for one. The legitimacy of the former helps provide cover for the latter when/ if the scheme is exposed.
May 13, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
So what's the not-well-meaning agenda? Just to confuse people in the primary so they stay home?
May 13, 2008 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why, would that be hard to believe? A common tactic.
May 13, 2008 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
How about: 5)None of the above; it's just business.
Maybe Women's Voices isn't setting out deliberately to confuse voters. They just don't care if their robocalls and mailings have that effect. (And if they also happened to help Hillary, that was just gravy.)
WVWV founder, president and CEO Page Gardner has defended her operation as one of the most "cost-effective" voter registration ops in the country.
Hundreds of thousands have been signed up, she says. So, by implication, her husband's company has not unduly profited from its contracts with WVWV.
The group follows the same model everywhere: it mass-mails voter registration forms, which recipients are told they must fill out and send back to WVWV. The group then forwards them to the elections boards "unopened."
The whole point of that extra step is so WVWV can add them to its tally of registered voters.
But it appears that up to half the mailings go out to people who are already registered. Confused, those people re-register, inflating WVWV's stats.
In North Carolina, if voter registration and turnout had really been its goal, Women's Voices' robocall would have simply urged people to avail themselves of the state's same-day vote-and-register option, in advance of the primary. That's what most other get-out-the-vote groups there did.
But then there would have been no paper trail enabling WVWV to claim credit for the registration, would there? No impressive figures to set out for would-be donors.
This group has put its business model ahead of actual concern for voters' rights.
May 13, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we have a winner!
WVWV is the Gardner family business and is justifying its existence and ongoing support, from people who have credibility, by fluffing its registration numbers.
May 14, 2008 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
In many states, you're not required to identify your race or ethnicity, so where are they getting their numbers when they identify the ratio of newly registered voters from a certain group?
May 13, 2008 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please, mailers get stuck in mail houses and the post office especially around election time. I remember a very expensive mailing in support of a Democrat that the post office received one week before the Election and mailed 2 weeks after. These things happen. I hate that they do, but they do.
Women's Voices, Women's Votes are respected for the voter registration efforts. They are a worthy organization. It's only the paranoia of the Obama camp looking for a sinister conspiracy and for racism in everything that is making this an issue.
Josh should know better, He knows these players, he knows that the charge of voter suppression is pure BS. I think this is time for his to step up and clarify this so you all down run down another stupefying rathole of conspiracist paranoia.
May 13, 2008 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
WVWV being a good organization doing good things is not a defense. Many a good company has faltered because of improprieties at the top or bottom. Did you see how many times they have made mistakes, promised to fix them, then repeated the mistake? Im not convicting anything but the need for more investigation. I have my guess, but it doesnt matter. But YOU are the one wrongfully convicting, Josh has merely reported facts- which are in fact eyebrow raising (rocket science of mail delays and all!)- and has no obligation to perform PR for WVWV.
May 13, 2008 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
It isn't Josh's role to "step in and clarify" anything.
This issue has festered for two weeks, specifically because Women's Voices has employed the same basic set of arguments you do: "we're well respected and worthy; we've done good work in the past; mistakes happen."
But WVWV president Page Gardner has avoided answering key questions about when, why and by whom key decisions where made.
In an interview, DailyKos got no answer about her husband's contractual relationship with the group.
As I suggest above, the profit motive is very troubling -- especially since it explains rather neatly why WVWV would adopt such an unwieldy voter registration process over simply informing North Carolinians that they could both register and vote in the primary all at the same time (the date happened to fall between that of the robocalls and when most mailings would have been received).
The unfolding of events is all neatly archived at the Facing South website:
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/
I do not know to what if any extent voter suppression in the primary was part of the WVWV's motivation -- simply that it was part of the EFFECT.
For a voter registration organization to do anything that actually discourages voting by the people it targets is simply wrong.
There are lots of other people involved in local and national GOTV efforts. I think would-be donors should look very carefully at who is getting their money and how it is being spent.
May 13, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
How about fodder for cadging lists? We still haven't heard about that tactic from last time.
May 13, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the people in charge of WVWV know Clinton, can anyone find signs of a split, because this sounds like an extremist splinter group to me?
May 14, 2008 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maggie Willaims stepped down from their board when she became Clinton's campaign mgr. I wouldn't call that split though, I'd call it covering her ass.
May 14, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
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