-Caveat Lector-
Campaigns' 'Profiling' Stirs Privacy Worries
By John Mintz and Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 10, 2000; Page A01
This Election Day, Republican campaign workers will tape
personalized letters on the front doors of thousands of voters in
Missouri. People who recently hinted to GOP telephone solicitors
a concern about taxes will receive notes highlighting that issue.
Others who mentioned guns or homosexuality will get letters on
those topics.
People whose spotty voting records suggest they need a ride to
the polls or a reminder to vote will receive seemingly prescient
offers of help.
These personal touches are the result of computer software that
helps political operatives intuit voters' beliefs and
predilections based on data about their income, lifestyles, past
electoral participation and other personal information.
Taking their cues from the world of direct marketing, candidates
and political organizations across the ideological spectrum are
harnessing high-tech tools to identify which voters to target
with their calls, letters, visits and, increasingly, e-mails. In
a neck-and-neck election in which turnout could be crucial, this
effort will personalize many politicians' pitches to voters as
never before.
"I see us on the cusp of a completely new politics, a marriage of
old shoe-leather organizing with the high-tech of the Internet
age," Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian
Coalition and now an adviser to Texas Gov. George W. Bush, said
of the new computerized targeting. "Many believe that this race
is so close, and that the two sides will fight to a draw on TV
and in the debates. So it'll come down to the night before the
dance, and these techniques could be the major factor."
The new technology will be employed not just by candidates but by
independent political groups. To locate likely allies beyond its
4 million members, the National Rifle Association buys government
and private lists of pickup truck owners, people with hunting
licenses, concealed weapons permit holders, gun show exhibitors
and outdoor magazine subscribers. This information is fed into
computers at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, where officials draw up
a "clean" list of people who are not already NRA members and who
will be contacted by phone and mail.
Using its own carefully culled lists, the National Abortion and
Reproductive Rights Action League is reaching out to 2 million
Republican and independent women in 15 key states that the group
believes will be sympathetic to its cause. It has fashioned
profiles of typical pro-choice women, using as a model
demographic data that its own members provided, and then seeking
out non-members who visit the same Web sites, listen to the same
radio stations or read the same newspapers.
"We contact the people who look likely to be inclined toward us,"
said Gloria Totten, the NARAL's political director. "The new
technologies allow us to perform the traditional types of
politicking we've always done, like going door-to-door and
getting people to the polls, much more efficiently and with
greater impact."
Sensitive Information
The trend of data-triggered targeting closely tracks advances in
the world of commercial direct marketing, and it offers many of
the same benefits, such as crafting messages relevant to
individual voters. But political consultants say it also raises
many of the same troubling questions about Information Age
manipulation, and in the far more sensitive area of supposedly
private political beliefs.
"It scares the hell out of me," said John Aravosis of Wired
Strategies, an Internet consulting firm that advises groups about
online marketing. "Political information is per se more
sensitive. . . . People have no clue about what these companies
do."
Even Jerry Baumann, an executive vice president at Map
Applications Inc., a company that sells database software to the
Missouri GOP, predicted the American public could be unsettled as
campaigns find themselves in an escalating race to gather more
and more fine-grained data about voters.
Politicians "will need to know more about individuals, but the
closer they'll come to offending voters' sense of privacy," he
said. Many campaigns, like the ones in Missouri, avoid drawing
attention to their technological prowess. "They're just very
careful they're not blatant about it," he said.
Patrick Fusselman, director of information services for the
Missouri GOP, agreed, saying it's best to downplay the data
prompting a personalized contact. "You're not telling them you
know they're pro-life," he said. "You're sending them a pro-life
message."
Map Applications, which also works with Iowa Republicans among
other GOP and conservative groups, can link more than 40 layers
of personal data to a voter's name and address, and then make
sense of it all. The information includes voters' ages along with
their children's ages, the value of their homes, whether they
have bank cards, and their ethnicity. Much of the data resold by
Map Applications originated with credit bureau giant Trans Union,
which for years has fought Federal Trade Commission limits on the
use of information contained in individuals' credit records.
Political campaigns have other smorgasbords of data from which to
choose. One is the SRDS Direct Marketing List Source, the bible
of the direct marketing industry. A recent SRDS catalogue offered
a 44,079-name list called "Anti-Clinton Republican
Revolutionaries." Others include "Beer-Bellied Reactionary
Republicans," and "Colorado Model Liberals."
Almost half the members of the Senate, more than 200 House
members and 46 state parties buy lists from another firm,
Aristotle International Inc. By culling rolls of registered
voters in county courthouses and other sites, it has assembled a
catalogue of 150 million voters and can append scores of other
personal details, such as the model of a voter's car and
estimated income.
The Republican National Committee runs an even bigger list, with
165 million voters' names. Most are accompanied by an array of
data provided by vendors, such as whether the voter is a military
veteran. The RNC is just beginning to make available these names
sliced and diced according to any number of demographic
profiles to GOP groups around the country.
The RNC has massively ratcheted up its investment in high-tech
projects: In 1999, it assigned one person to these tasks, on a
$150,000 budget. Now it has a dozen, with a $5 million budget.
"This is the next generation of politics, and we're using [the
data] in ways we never have before," said RNC Chairman Jim
Nicholson. "We're trying to push the technology to the edge. . .
. Tip O'Neill used to say, 'All politics is local.' But now all
politics is personal."
The Democrats have ratcheted up their use of databases, too, but
at the state level. "They're constantly updated and sorted" with
an eye toward maximizing turnout on Election Day, said Laurie
Moskowitz, who coordinates the Democratic National Committee's
state work.
The NAACP is assembling its own registry of 3 million black
voters to be contacted by phone and letter. The task is easy in
the South, where states are required to list voters' race on
voter registration rolls. To find its constituency elsewhere, the
group uses census data to locate mostly black neighborhoods and
then employs other information banks to strip out non-blacks.
Electronic Everything
In decades past, Democratic canvassers had to flip through
immense stacks of "walk cards" on which they jotted information
about voters. Now they fill out pre-printed forms on voters'
responses to questions as they walk from house to house on routes
mapped with the help of precinct software bought from the U.S.
Postal Service to determine the most efficient route through
neighborhoods.
Then they key the data such as information on which issues most
motivate the voters into a computer back at the office, using a
wand that scans unique bar codes on the forms, one to a voter.
That allows the database to be tapped according to the desired
demographic group of the moment for example, over-40,
pro-choice women in Scranton, Pa.
Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign in New York uses another
technology. As phone volunteers fill out forms recording voters'
responses to questions about their views and backgrounds, the
forms are faxed to a computer in San Francisco, which
automatically enters the recorded data. It is then zipped back to
a computer in Philadelphia, where the information is sorted for
an overnight report back to the campaign about the voters'
positions, as well as about where the campaign is succeeding or
lagging.
"The voter contact business has been revolutionized by technology
that handles the transfer of these huge amounts of data," said
Ken Smukler, president of Voterlink Data Systems, which handles
the job for the first lady.
All the data-crunching work by political organizations is put to
the test in the last few days before the election, when they take
part in what was once the most old-fashioned and pedestrian of
electoral activities, getting out the vote. In the modern era,
one of the most effective methods is to bombard voters with
"robo-calls" featuring taped messages exhorting targeted voters
to get to the polls. This Election Day, Democrats are expected to
make millions of such calls featuring a message from President
Clinton.
Last year the Missouri GOP used Map Applications software to help
win a special election for a state House seat in suburban Kansas
City. To elect Susan C. Phillips, a religious conservative, the
party targeted 3,000 voters with personal appeals, salted with
information from public records, phone interviews and a plethora
of computer-assisted surveys. The tactic whipped up a
larger-than-average turnout and helped her win.
Dee Stewart, executive director of the Iowa Republican Party,
said the software the GOP uses "enables you to really cross
reference any data you want" about voters, including whether they
are Christian, or are gun enthusiasts, married or unmarried,
affluent or poor. As for running a political campaign without
such technological help, he said, "I can't imagine."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
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