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The Democrats' Voter Privacy Fail
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Party
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| Contributor | particleman |
| Last Edited | particleman Oct 21, 2010 10:48pm |
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| Category | News |
| Author | Stephanie Mencimer |
| News Date | Friday, October 22, 2010 04:45:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | If you happen to receive a call from someone who says they're phoning on behalf of Organizing for America (OFA)—the successor group to Barack Obama's campaign machine—don't be surprised if he or she implores you to vote for tea party favorites like Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, or Rand Paul, or merely lambasts health care reform. The caller won't actually be a member of Obama's 13-million strong legion of campaign supporters, but rather a tea party prankster who has access to your personal information, thanks to OFA's privacy-challenged get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign.
Ahead of the midterms, OFA, which was folded into the Democratic National Committee following Obama's election, has created an online "virtual" phone bank ostensibly for use by Democratic volunteers. As of Monday, the web page provided the names of Democrats who voted in 2008 but who aren't always regular voters, plus their phone numbers, ages, locations, and party affiliations.
Anyone can access the information without so much as logging in. And as it turns out, some conservative activists are doing just that. Entrepreneurial tea partiers have seized on the Democrats' GOTV tool to lobby for their own candidates, and sometimes just to annoy Democratic voters while posing as members of Obama's campaign machine.
OFA, of course, isn't the only political group this year using a virtual phone bank to rally voters to the polls. The Republicans are doing it, too. But while the Republican National Committee's website also hosts a virtual phone bank, the GOP's tech wizards have done a far better job of protecting voters'—and volunteers'—privacy than their Democratic counterparts.
While OFA doesn't require potential phone bankers to register before they're able to make calls, the GOP site not only requires registration but a live phone call from the RNC to verify your indentity. Not only that, but the Republicans have also put measures in place to protect the privacy of its volunteers |
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