Womens Voices, Women Vote has registered over 400,000 unmarried women, African American and Latina voters this cycle. We have mailed applications forms, to over 10 million prospective voters in 26 states. For those unregistered people for whom we have phone numbers, we provide a robo call alerting them that they'll be receiving a registration application in the mail, and urging them to fill it out and return it.

Our North Carolina phone calls and mailing went not only to African American voters but to unmarried women and Latinas. It is hard to imagine why we would have mailed to all these constituencies if we were trying to help one candidate or suppress the vote of one demographic group.

This week, there was a misunderstanding about the robo calls preceding our mailed registration applications in North Carolina. Apparently someone complained that they were already registered, and believed that a call urging them to register might have been intended to create ambiguity about their registration status.

Like many other voter registration groups, we typically continue our voter registration work without a pause up until the general election registration deadline. We have not typically closed down operations during the window when registration will be too late to participate in a primary, but is still in plenty of time to participate in a general election. We do not believe that people who are in fact registered to vote jump to the conclusion that they can't vote simply because they are offered another opportunity to register.

Unfortunately, steadily increasing voter suppression efforts in recent years have created a not-unreasonable sense of suspicion among all of us who support voting rights. In the North Carolina case, it led some to jump to a very wrong conclusion.

We regret any misunderstanding although clearly the mail would have informed all who received the calls as to our identity and the registration rules and deadlines. We have concluded that, in this context, we will not in the future mail or call during the window between close of registration for the primary and the primary election.