Clinton campaign manager and board member of Women’s Voices, Maggie WilliamsA whole bunch of African-American registered voters in North Carolina recently received a strange automated phone call. Suddenly they were registered and confused, which investigators think was most likely the purpose of the calls.
“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.”
In fact, the deadline to register for the May 6 Democratic presidential primary had already passed…The call and follow-up mailings left many wondering whether they were registered for the primary or not.
This sounds like a classic example of voter suppression — sowing confusion in order to drive down turn-out. The calls seemed to be aimed at African-American communities…
The calls were traced back to a group called Women’s Voices, Women Vote. And that’s where it gets interesting. Among its board members is former Pres. Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta and Hillary Clinton’s campaign manger, Maggie Williams.
Among Billaryland’s inner circle, Maggie Williams is renowned as the ultimate Hillary loyalist, fierce and unwavering in her devotion for nearly 25 years…
A Kansas City native, Williams, 53, was a central player in the Clinton damage-control machine during the White House years.
In 1995, a uniformed Secret Service officer swore under oath he saw her leave White House lawyer and Hillary confidant Vince Foster’s office carrying documents after Foster committed suicide. Williams denied it.
She ran up more than $100,000 in legal bills defending Hillary in various investigations.
The North Carolina calls aren’t the first, or even the first to receive complaints and investigations.
The Institute [for Southern Studies, which is investigating] turned up other complaints about the group as well, in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. A “Lamont Williams” robocall similar to North Carolina’s ran in Ohio last fall. In Virginia, robocalls days before the February primary caused voters to flood the board of elections with phone calls, in turn triggering an investigation by the state police.
[Institute Director Chris] Kromm says this shows at least five months of a “deceptive tactic, illegal in many states.” He notes, “Each time this group is criticized for this activity, they apologize for the confusion.”
The North Carolina attorney general says the robocalls are illegal. State law requires that automated phone calls identify the sponsoring group and give the recipient a phone number or other means of contacting the group. The Lamont Williams call did neither.
It’s easy to apologize when you’ve already achieved your objective. “Whoops, our bad. Now where’s the next primary?”
This is another slice and dice group: slice the electorate and keep em fighting — for crumbs.
Hillary Penn Clinton is an expert at it.
The two top staff members of Women’s Voices Women’s Votes have ties to Obama:
Page S. Garner, the founder and president of WVWV, was chief of staff for former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, an Obama supporter.
Joe Goode, the executive director and second in command to Gardner, worked for NC Rep. David Price, who has endorsed Obama.
And Ben Smith at the conservative Politico.com reports that although one of WVWV’s phone vendors worked for Clinton, a a second vendor, Integral Resources, works for Obama too.
Nice try, but Garner’s ties to the Clintons go back to Bill’s first run in 1992 when she worked on his presidential campaign. And while vendors can have all kinds of clients, they aren’t making the same calls for each. What else you got?
Never mind. The great MSM isn’t interested in stories like this, nor in whaat Kantor said about white working class people in Indiana. Things like that must be ignored. But find us something to harm Obama and you’ll see another feeding frenzy.
Considering all that help, I wonder why Hillary still has to cheat and lie and lie. I suppose it’s just the nature of the monster.
So Gardner’s ties to the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1992 trump her position as Mosley-Braun’s chief of staff in 1996?
I’m just guessing but as a Democrat in politics, I bet she’s worked for any number of people who support Obama and any number who support Clinton. So I would say, yes, I would think her personal ties to the Clintons would outweigh any third-party ties by others to others.
Gardner has also contributed the Maximum amounts to Clinton and nothing to Obama. Others on her staff are Clinton-only donors.
Obama forces seemed determined to prove this past week that there was a sinister Clinton plot at hand to suppress the Black vote in North Carolina because a non-partisan non-profit group made robo calls a week before the primary using a voice that sounded African American.
Women’s Voices, Women Vote is an advocacy organization working on getting unmarried women to register to vote. Unfortunately it happens to have some very prominent Clinton Administration officials on the board of directors. Most prominent is John Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff, now head of the Center for American Progress.
Unfortunately for Obama forces, and now the NC NAAPC, the reality is much more mundane. As Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post states, “Even some of the bloggers who had raised the specter of a Clinton conspiracy seemed to accept that shoddy management, despite all that talent, was the more likely culprit.”
The backstory here is the outsourcing of political advocacy and campaigns to computers, robo-calls and direct mail. Instead of relying on volunteers to connect with voters, campaigns are increasingly using robo calls to make those connections. This is a shame and a part of the increasing cynicism that the American voter has with politics and with Washington. Sen Feinstein and Rep Lofgren have recognized this and introduced the Robocall Privacy Act to address some of the worst aspects of robocalls. I testified at the hearings Sen Feinstein held on this issue in February this year.
We are fighting back with The National Political Do Not Contact Registry at StopPoliticalCalls.org by asking politicians to take a “do not robo call” pledge. So far Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Nancy Boyda (D-KS) have taken the pledge. Just this week, local VA-11 candidate for Congress Lori Alexander took the pledge as well.
Regards,
Shaun Dakin – CEO & Founder
The National Political Do Not Contact Registry
– A non-partisan, non-profit program by Citizens for Civil Discourse
http://www.StopPoliticalCalls.org/
http://blog.StopPoliticalCalls.org/
[…] Jerimee wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIn Virginia, robocalls days before the February primary caused voters to flood the board of elections with phone calls, in turn triggering an investigation by the state police. Among Billaryland’s inner circle, Maggie Williams is … […]