As TPM pointed out yesterday, Women's Voices Women's Votes had another one of their little "accidents" in West Virginia. From the Charleston Daily Mail:
Betty Ireland (WV Secretary of State) said she's worried that a mass mailing aimed at getting young women in West Virginia to register to vote might cause confusion.
A group called "Women's Voices. Women Vote" sent out more than 16,000 mailers to unmarried women in the state after April 22, the last day to register in time to vote Tuesday.
(This issue is highlighted on the WV Secretary of State's website.)
Page Gardner, President of WVWV, is quoted in the article as saying:
"We hope that this unfortunate coincidence in timing does not lead to any confusion or aggravation for either your state's voters or registrars."
Really, Page, another unfortunate coincidence? Again? How many coincidences make a pattern?
And it turns out that WVWV shares an office with an organization whose president declared herself part of "Feminists for Clinton."
O RLY?
We need to know the facts about the connections between these two organizations:
Women's Voices Women's Votes address is:
1707 L Street NW, Suite 750, Washington, D.C. 20036
Fax: 202-833-4362
Phone: 202-659-9570
The Institute for Women's Policy Research address is:
1707 L Street, NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20036
Fax: 202-833-4362
Phone: 202-785-5100
Heidi Hartmann, President of the IWPR, signed the "Feminists for Clinton" letter posted on The Huffington Post. So IWPR is clearly part of "Feminists for Clinton."
How about WVWV? Are they also feminists for Clinton? Two political organizations both targeting women that share an office - how diffferent are their political agendas?
Simply stated: Is the WVWV organization actively partisan on behalf of Hillary Clinton?
On the WVWV website, Page Gardner posted a statement about the controversy over her group's North Carolina activitites:
“We understand that efforts to suppress voter turnout have been all too prevalent all over the country in recent years so that voting rights advocates are appropriately vigilant. WVWV will be especially sensitive to these concerns as it proceeds toward its goal of registering over a million voters for the general election in November."
She forgot to mention that WVW had done exactly the same thing in West Virginia. How about that vigilance? After the Virginia primary, WVWV promised to stop placing robocalls anonymously and didn't. They continued to employ the same tactics in North Carolina and West Virginia.
When you robo-call voters without identifying your organization, target black voters with a voice actor who identifies himself as "Lamont Williams," repeatedly sow confusion among female and black voters right before a primary election, and continue to do so even after receiving multiple complaints, there is more going on than simple "coincidence."
As Adam B explained in his excellent diary, there are already investigations of WVWV underway by the NC Attorney General and the NAACP. Hopefully these investigations will get to the bottom of WVWV's tactics. Let's hope that the AG also looks into the relationship between WVWV and IWPR. If there have been any illegal actions, the AG needs to know about it.
And so do we.