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In my last post, Grouping and Giving, I noted the tendency of activists wanting to act together. The first comment, though, was from aiko, and said 'Open Left needs to deal with this, it isn't going away', and pointed to this recommended diary on Dailykos about Women's Voices Women's Vote. Josh Marshall in particular has been flogging this story without context, implying some sort of nefarious subplot here despite WVWV's long track record of registering unmarried women and statements from both Obama and Clinton supporters validating their work. WVWV has worked with the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and is a highly respected organization that does real data-driven voter registration oriented towards registering the 20 million unmarried women that were not even registered in 2004.
And yet, these are the kinds of nasty accusations coming at WVWV.
Did Women's Voices lie to the Virginia State Police when they promised to stop making anonymous robo-calls? Or were the illegal, anonymous calls in North Carolina just another "accidental omission?"
I believe this is the lowest point I have ever seen the blogosphere sink. There is no reason whatsoever for this mob mentality to go after one of the most important voter registration efforts out there designed to empower women. I don't meant that WVWV shouldn't be questioned and held accountable for its incompetence, but there is a difference between arguing that the group made mistakes and making the case that it is a voter suppression effort.
There is simply no motive here for voter suppression. If WVWV was trying to suppress votes in North Carolina for Clinton or Obama, why would they also be doing this work in 24 states at the same time? If they are such an evil anti-progressive group, why would they award 'female blogger of the year to Digby' and run ads encouraging women to vote?
The most likely reason WVWV is engaging in weird voter registration efforts is because they didn't expect the primary to go on this long and their strategy was organized around registering voters for the general election. There's a lot of hype around WVWV sending people information after the voter registration deadline had already passed, as if WVWV was trying to suppress primary votes. But it's quite clear that WVWV is trying to register people for the general election, and that deadline hasn't passed.
Reminding people to vote after a primary registration deadline is an effective way to generate registrations. 'oh, I missed it, I won't miss it next time' is a powerful motivator. This tactic has the downside of confusing and upsetting people who are registered, but if the lists aren't clean, I can see an organization deciding to annoy a bunch of registered voters in order to register others, especially if your metric for success is the number of voters you register and not the number of registered voters you annoy. During a hotly contested primary, this is a big blunder, but in 2004 and 2006, WVWV probably did this and it worked to register a lot of voters without the intense focus on the irritation of registered voters.
Much of politics, including campaigns, is annoying people until they do stuff. This isn't an excuse, but it does offer an explanation as to why WVWV isn't an evil group but probably used some irritating tactics to register voters.
There are some unanswered questions here, and WVWV has engaged in an utterly atrocious PR strategy. They didn't put out the fires quickly, they weren't forthcoming with information, and they allowed a PR disaster to happen. But, and this is a very big but, we screwed ourselves here by blowing this up into a story the Repubicans will use to damage all our voter registration efforts. We do not need these obstacles, considering the Supreme Court's recent decision disenfranchising voters.
Accusing a group of doing secretive robocalls, and then doing very little follow-up to contextualize any of it, is like irradiating an area. This will not go away, even if WVWV is exonerated or it is found that the group made some innocent mistakes. And the mob mentality online is just unbelievable and mean-spirited.
Women's Voices Women's Vote does one the most important and underhyped jobs in progressive politics, registering unmarried and disempowered women to vote using intense research methods. They are also embarking on new models of voter registration for people of color. They group is dedicated to empowering people. Congratulations, aiko, for demanding I 'deal' with them.
At times like this I feel like there is no movement at play in the primary at this point. It's just a group of childish, whiny, spoiled cheerleaders of imperial gladiatorial combat.
Ridiculous.
Update: Adam Bonin has a thoughtful take on the issue, which, while I disagree on many points, is carefully written and includes a nice set of responses from WVWv.
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