In the Interest of Conversation

Yesterday, Peter Overby of NPR reported that Women’s Voices, Women Vote, a group with ties to Hillary Clinton, placed thousands of robo-calls to (mostly black) North Carolina voters last week. The calls, which are illegal because they do not give the recipient any way to contact the group nor even identify the sponsoring group, led registered voters to believe that they were, in fact, not registered. This is what they heard:

Hello. This is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is fill it out, sign it, date and return the application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return your registration form when it arrives. Thank you.

As Overby notes: “This sounds like a classic example of voter suppression — sowing confusion in order to drive down turn-out.”

The founder of Women’s Voices worked on Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, and board member John Podesta was President Clinton’s chief-of-staff. Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, used to be on the Women’s Voices leadership team and did consulting work for the group.

This afternoon, I called Women’s Voices, Women Vote to register a complaint about these ridiculous calls. The woman who answered said that they are doing everything they can to rectify the situation.

I’m not surprised that things like this happen, but it does make me feel sad and defeated that most Americans can speak more intelligibly about crazy Paula Abdul than voters who were disenfranchised in November 2000 and 2004, the voters in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin who have been misled by Women’s Voices, and the voters in Indiana who will now be unable to vote thanks to the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.

In an editorial in today’s New York Times, Adam Cohen calls on Congress to protect voters:

It is chilling to think that state legislators and election officials would intentionally try to make it harder for Americans to vote, but they always have — with poll taxes, literacy tests and gerrymandering. There was a time when the Supreme Court regularly struck these restrictions down. In 1966, it held Virginia’s $1.50 poll tax unconstitutional. In 1972, it ruled that Tennessee’s one-year residency requirement for voting violated the Constitution.

Now the Supreme Court has switched sides. This week, it upheld a harsh Indiana voter ID law that could disenfranchise many poor, elderly and student voters. The ruling will make it even easier for other states to block voters’ access to the ballot box.

If the courts won’t protect voters, Congress has to. The Constitution, in Article 1, Section 4, gives Congress broad authority to set the rules for federal elections. It should use this power to set minimum voting rights standards that would apply nationwide and ensure that all eligible Americans could vote.

… Critics of reform make the specious argument that states have the right to set the rules for federal elections. The founders, when they wrote the Constitution, said otherwise.

If you’d like to call Women’s Voices to complain, this is their phone number: 202-659-9570.

You can read or listen to the full NPR story here.

There is another great article about it here, on Wired.