Lamont Williams, "voice talent"

Daily Kos has a new story about the robo-call operation in North Carolina I discussed yesterday. I don't buy the answers Daily Kos got from Women's Voices Women Vote and if I could I would ask the following:

1. Where did Women's Voices Women Vote get the list of men they called using the recorded voice of Lamont Williams, an African American "professional voice talent?" They claim they are targeting "unregistered voters and voters that have previously been registered but have moved and need to reregister." Then why did they get so many registered voters? In the case of the men they called, they presumably were targeting "African Americans, Hispanics and young people," which are the groups Women's Voices Women Vote reportedly reach out to, alongside the organization's main target, women. If it turns out they were calling people identified as Obama supporters, and they were using a list they procured from the Clinton campaign, this is an ugly story.
2. Why didn't Women's Voices Women Vote identify they were the source of the call? In February, after a similar series of robo-calls in Virginia created confusion and concern, Women's Voices Women Vote pledged that they never again would make anonymous calls and would, from that point forward, clearly identify that the calls were coming from Women's Voices Women Vote. Yet here we are, almost three months later, and they not only aren't following through and doing what they promised, they are making the strange choice of using a woman's voice to call women and an African American actor to call men. If they aren't up to some deceptive game designed to fool call recipients into thinking a person of color, ostensibly tied to the Obama campaign, is calling, why use different messages for men and women?
3. The calls placed to men, at least, appear to have been made after the deadline for registering to vote in North Carolina passed. What about the calls to women, who, given the trends of this race, were more likely to vote for Hillary? Were those calls made after the registration deadline?

(Update 5/2: This story has made an appearance in the mainstream media, popping up on the ABC News website under the banner "Brian Ross and the Investigative Team." It has not, as far as I can tell, appeared on ABC's evening broadcast. The ABC story, and a follow-up from Facing South, who broke the story, now identify that the calls featuring Lamont Williams were made ONLY to African American households, and that identical calls were made to African American households in Ohio and Louisiana as well as Virgina. I missed Page Gardner's "apology" on the Huffington Post on Wednesday. Gardner is Founder and President of Women's Voices Women Vote and was deputy politcal director for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and presidential transition team. Is it too paranoid to imagine Women's Voices Women Vote was launched in anticipation of a role it might play in a Hillary Clinton campaign for president? Facing South, the blog that played a key role in bringing this story forward, has a vital update on its site today. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has called the calls illegal and is opening an investigation.)