RALEIGH, N.C. — A group that made political telemarketing calls that did not comply with North Carolina law has agreed to pay $100,000 in penalties and is barred from operating in the state before the November election, Attorney General Roy Cooper said Wednesday.

The group, Women’s Voices Women Vote, began calling people in North Carolina shortly before the May primary election.  The prerecorded calls, also known as robo calls, told people that they would soon receive voter registration forms in the mail, which they should fill out and submit.  But the deadline to register by mail had passed, and some call recipients already were registered to vote, causing confusion.

Political robo calls are prerecorded telephone calls made by candidates, campaigns and advocacy groups using automated dialers.  Under state law, political campaigns and non-profits making prerecorded calls must identify who is making the call, the nature of the call, and provide contact information for the group that makes the call.

The calls did not identify Women’s Voices Women Vote or tell how to contact them, so people who were confused by the robo calls were not able to ask for clarification.

“My office takes quick action against robo calls that don’t strictly follow the law,” Cooper said. “People who don’t want these calls shouldn’t get them at all.  The law needs to be stronger so that the Do Not Call Registry applies to political robo callers just like any other telemarketer.”

Cooper launched an investigation in April into calls made by Women’s Voices Women Vote and demanded that the group stop the calls.  Cooper’s office received complaints about the calls from consumers, the NAACP and Democracy North Carolina.

Women’s Voices Women Vote today agreed to pay $100,000 in civil penalties for its prerecorded calls to North Carolina residents.  The money will go to North Carolina schools.

In a statement released to the media, Page Gardner, president of Women’s Voices, Women Vote, said the nonprofit group mails registration applications to people it beleives are not registered, or may have moved from their registered address.

“These mailings are frequently preceded by automated telephone calls (“robocalls”) advising the household that they will soon receive voter registration materials.  Unfortunately, due to an inadvertent error, these calls failed to identify WVWV as the organization sponsoring the calls.  WVWV understands that this failure was inconsistent with North Carolina law and, consequently, has entered into a settlement agreement to resolve the North Carolina Attorney General’s investigation of this matter.”

Gardner said it was not the group’s intention to cause confusion. 

Under the settlement agreement, Women’s Voices Women Vote agrees not to resume any voter registration, education, turnout or similar activities in the state until after the Nov. 4 election.  Any future voter activities by the organization in North Carolina must comply with state law and the group would have to provide the Attorney General’s Office with a written description of how it would ensure its compliance with the law.

WVWV seeks to register unmarried women, who constitute 26 percent of the election, and to encourage them to vote.  During the course of its history, WVWV’s efforts have resulted in the submission of more than 1 million voter registration applications across the country, with nearly 900,000 in this election cycle alone.  In North Carolina, WVWV’s efforts have generated more than 42,000 registration applications, including more than 32,000 in 2008.

With Election Day just weeks away and early voting already underway, North Carolinians are receiving more political robo calls from other groups and campaigns.  Earlier this year Cooper urged political parties and candidates to honor the Do Not Call Registry and reminded them to abide by state law that requires disclosures on robo calls.

People who join the Registry are protected from commercial calls by both state and federal laws, but those laws currently exclude political robo calls.  Cooper had asked lawmakers to include political robo calls in the Do Not Call legislation.

“Telemarketers that break our laws will face action from my office, whether they’re calling to pitch you a product or to win your vote,” Cooper said.  “If you get illegal telemarketing calls, let my office know about it.”

To report telemarketers or candidates that make calls unlawfully, consumers can call 1-877-5-NO-SCAM toll free within the state or download a consumer complaint form at www.ncdoj.gov.

To check on their voter registration status, people can visit the state Board of Elections web site at http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/VoterLookup.aspx or contact their local county board of elections.

Voter fraud allegations by John McCain and Republican Party officials in recent days appear intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Although the Republicans don’t say this, their comments could be aimed at several goals, experts said, ranging from simply energizing their conservative base to laying the groundwork for possible election challenges.

In any case, spokesmen for both the national Republican Party and the McCain campaign don’t deny the implication that their comments raise questions about the legitimacy of the election outcome.

“I hope the election does not have this problem,” said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, when asked Friday whether he was suggesting the election outcome could be illegitimate. “We’ve got 18 days. We think
John McCain could win this election, and we don’t want a pall cast on it.”

Meanwhile, the Barack Obama campaign charged Friday that the U.S. Justice Department is collaborating with the GOP in seeking to create doubt about the validity of the election process.

That accusation, from Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer, was based on a news story leaked from the Justice Department, saying that the FBI was investigating charges of voter fraud against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a liberal group that has done voter registration work nationwide.

Because the leak violated Justice Department policy, and because of the lack of significant evidence of vote fraud involving ACORN, Bauer said, the department appears to be succumbing to political pressure to hype the accusations.

He called it a repeat of the Justice Department’s politically motivated firing of U.S. attorneys in 2006. An inspector general’s report concluded they were fired because they had displeased Republicans by not prosecuting allegations of corruption and voter fraud against Democrats.

Bauer called it “an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the worst kind of politics,” and said the inspector general’s probe should be expanded to include the leak and all allegations of voter fraud and voter suppression.

A McCain campaign spokesman called the accusation “outrageous,” “absurd,” and “almost a parody of the Obama campaign’s attempt to intimidate their political opponents.”

There have been several state investigations into voter registration forms submitted by ACORN, which sometimes pays registrants to get prospective voters to fill out and sign forms. ACORN acknowledges its workers have sometimes falsified forms to get paid without doing the work.

In probably the worst case so far, prosecutors in Washington state charged seven ACORN employees with turning in more than 1,800 phony registration forms in 2006.

King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg emphasized the defendants’ aim was to get paid, not influence elections, and the workers were cheating ACORN. None of the phony forms led to illegal voting.

He said ACORN applied “lax oversight,” and the organization signed a consent decree promising better oversight.

ACORN says that in some cases it has alerted elections officials when it suspected workers were turning in falsified forms, but that once it receives the forms, it’s legally required to turn them in.

Because of checks by elections officials, if a fraudulent form is submitted, that doesn’t mean a voter will be registered or vote illegally.

A 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law examined recent claims of fraud made by parties, elections officials, journalists and bloggers, and concluded, “We are aware of no recent substantiated case in which registration fraud has resulted in fraudulent votes being cast.”
Nonetheless, McCain, his top campaign aides and Republicans have repeatedly suggested that ACORN’s work threatens the legitimacy of the election.

They’ve criticized Obama for his links to ACORN, including having represented the organization in a court case, and having paid an affiliate for work on his campaign.

In Wednesday’s debate, McCain said ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history, … maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” He added in a TV interview that “several thousand votes could obviously tip the entire huge state of Florida.”

In a news conference call with reporters Friday, Davis said “rampant voter fraud” has created a “cloud of suspicion that seems to right now hang over this election.”

In a conference call Thursday that focused on what they said was extensive election fraud in Florida, Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz and counsel Sean Cairncross accused ACORN of “attempting to subvert our election system and election laws” and “trying to defraud the electoral system,” in Diaz’s words.

Even McCain allies consider these accusations overblown.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Secretary of State Kurt Browning have both denied there are any significant problems with ACORN voter registration activities in Florida, and Diaz and Cairncross couldn’t give any figures indicating there were; they pointed to one form signed by “Mickey Mouse.”

Browning has said he has a good impression of ACORN, and that there have been only scattered incidents of problems in its registration work.

Crist pooh-poohed the allegations of fraud, saying there’s “less than is being discussed. As we’re coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who sort of enjoy chaos.”

Asked whether Diaz and Cairncross were suggesting the results of the Florida election might be tainted, RNC officials wouldn’t respond on the record. One party official, asking not to be named, responded only,

“ACORN’s activities have the effect of undermining confidence in the integrity of the election process.”
University of Central Florida political scientist Aubrey Jewett said there could be several motives behind the accusations by McCain and his allies: to “rally the conservative base”; to create pressure for elections officials to scrutinize and possibly toss ACORN’s voter registrations, which focus on Obama-leaning young and minority voters; or to lay groundwork for a legal challenge of the outcome.

“If it came down to as close as in 2000, or to just one or two states with close votes, then it could be trying to plant the seed for a challenge,” he said.

DURHAM, N.C. — On Thursday morning more than 100 faculty, staff, and students at North Carolina University made their way across campus chanting and sweating to proclaim the start of Early Voting in Durham.

By Liz Kravitz, NBC17 Reporter

DURHAM, N.C. — Suspected fraudulent voter registration forms have been turning up in North Carolina.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Early voting begins Thursday.

In Wake County, there are five one-stop voting sites. Even if you don’t have your voter registration card, you can still vote early.

The Wake County Board of Elections says cards are slow to go out because it’s so busy verifying tens of thousands of voter registrations. Currently the BOE says it’s has a backlog of 20,000 registrations to go through.

Only five of Wake County’s one-stop voting sites open tomorrow. All 15 will be open Oct. 23. You can cast a ballot at any of the early voting sites in your county.

Early voting ends Nov. 1. 

Find A One-Stop Voting Location:
Wake County

Full List of All Counties

RALEIGH, N.C. - The State Board of Elections so far has found 135 bogus voter registration forms submitted by a community organizing group.

The elections board is checking suspicious voter registration forms handed in by canvassers working for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

ACORN works to register low-income people as voters.

Gary Bartlett, the elections board director, gave a preliminary count of the fakes: 104 from Durham, 30 from Wake and one from Mecklenburg.

The investigation is not yet complete.

“We’re still processing voter registration applications,” Bartlett said.

ACORN cooperated with the investigation.

Since 2007, ACORN claims to have registered 1.3 million people nationwide, including nearly 28,000 in North Carolina.

The group checks all the completed forms its canvassers return and flags all the questionable applications.

By law, the organization must give all forms to the elections boards, even the suspicious ones.

Falsified registration forms do not lead to voter fraud, elections officials said. Names that do not have accurate information don’t make it on to the voter rolls. People who fill out multiple registration forms appear only once on the voter list.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Ohio’s top elections official to set up a system by Friday to verify the eligibility of new voters and make the information available to the state’s 88 county election boards.

The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a lower court ruling that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must use other government records to check thousands of new voters for registration fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had disagreed last week, but the full court’s ruling overturns that decision.

Ohio Republicans had sued Brunner, a Democrat. Her spokesman had no immediate comment Tuesday.

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January, with many doing so before the contested Democratic primary election last March between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Since then, Ohio Republicans have filed a series of challenges to the registrations and Brunner’s administration of election rules. They have helped voters file lawsuits against local boards of election over registration rules, absentee ballot requests and a weeklong period that allowed registration and voting on the same day.
 
Brunner previously said there was no way to set up the system with such speed.

Last week, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had sided with Brunner, but after hearing an appeal the full panel sided with the GOP and U.S. District Judge George C. Smith in Columbus. Smith had ordered Brunner to develop a way to verify voter registration information and make it available to local election boards.

Brunner argued that it would take two to three days to create the necessary computer programs, and said nothing in the federal Help America Vote Act required her to do what the district court ordered.

Tuesday’s order directs Brunner to verify new registrations by comparing that information with data from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.

Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett accused Brunner of pursuing a partisan agenda and said “her delay in providing this matching system leaves little time for election officials to act on questionable registrations.”
 
Bennett said Brunner was destroying the public’s trust in Ohio’s elections system.
 
“Her shameful actions to disenfranchise Republican absentee voters, block the transparency of early voting and refuse the proper verification of newly registered voters have rightfully damaged her credibility as a nonpartisan election administrator,” he said.

Polling in the state shows Obama, now the Democratic presidential nominee, slightly ahead of Republican challenger John McCain. Both campaigns have worked hard in the state, which has 20 electoral votes and gave President Bush a second term in 2004.

RALEIGH, N.C. — The NC Same Day Voter Registration Coalition, which led advocacy efforts to win NC’s first voting rights expansion for Same Day Voter Registration at Early Voting Sites, will have a press conference to promote public education on Thursday at 11 a.m. in front of the State Board of Elections Building at 506 North Harrington Street, in Raleigh. NC State Board of Election officials will join the press conference.

North Carolina offers “Same Day Voter Registration at Early Voting Sites.” On-site voter registration will be available at Early Voting locations between Oct. 16 and Nov. 1 for the upcoming General Election on Nov. 4. You may not register on Election Day.

In order to take advantage of this option, voters must be a U.S. citizen and — by Election Day – be at least 18 years old and have lived in the county at least 30 days. Voters must show election officials an acceptable form of identification as proof of your residence. Below are the options:

·         NC Driver’s License.

·         Utility bill, including a bill from an electric, water, gas, telephone or cable company.

·         Bank statement or bank-card statement.

·         Paycheck or stub.

·         Student ID and a document from the school with the student’s address.

·         Any local, state, or federal government document showing your residential address, such as a car registration, fishing license, military ID, Social Security letter, tax bill, building permit, etc.

WAKE COUNTY, N.C. -  Waves of procrastinators filed into the Wake County Board of Elections Friday, the last day to register in North Carolina.