by Lois Beckett, ProPublica, Feb. 5, 2013, 7 a.m.
For years, state Democratic parties have been gathering information
about individual voters' political leanings. They have noted down the
opinions voters shared with canvassers — which candidates they said they
supported or their positions on policy issues.
Now, the record of what people told Democratic volunteers may go up for
sale — and not just to political groups. Democrats are looking into
whether credit card companies, retailers like Target or other commercial
interests may want to buy the information.
State Democratic party leaders formed the National Voter File Co-op in
2011 to sell their voter data to approved groups like the NAACP. The
goal was to recoup some of the money local Democratic parties spent
collecting and updating their local voter lists, which include voters of
all parties.
Much of the data the co-op sells comes from the government and is
already part of the public record — information such as voters' names,
addresses and party affiliation.
But local Democratic parties also have information about voters' views
and preferences collected over many campaign cycles. (We wrote about
Minnesota's data-collecting "Grandma Brigade"
last month.) Some states have used this raw data to create
sophisticated estimates of how likely any voter is to vote for a
Democrat, support Barack Obama or have certain opinions, say, on
abortion or gun control.
As the co-op moves into its second year of selling data in an already
crowded marketplace, it's looking for new potential clients — and
companies who may use the data for commercial purposes, as opposed to
political ones, are on the list.
"That's one of our growth areas," said Drew Brighton of TargetSmart Communications, which helps administer and market the Co-op's data. "Over the next six months, we are going to go ahead and make the rounds with some corporate prospects."
Brighton said retailers, for example, might be interested in figuring
out if their customers are primarily Democrats or Republicans. "People
want to know who shops in their stores," he said.
Democrats involved with the co-op do not know what companies might be most interested in buying their voter data.
"What the co-op is doing is saying, 'Look, there's a wealth of
information here, that could potentially benefit your corporation or
your business interests,'" said Ken Martin, a member of the co-op's
board, and the chairman of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
"Everything is on the table, nothing's off the table. It's up to us to
figure out what [data] there's a market for, and whether there's a
comfort level among state parties for selling that information," he
said.
Each state Democratic Party will have the final say over whether to sell
their voter information for commercial purposes. If state party leaders
aren't comfortable with selling proprietary data to a certain client,
they can opt out.
Individual states have different laws about how their public voting
records can be used. Many states mandate that public voter rolls can
only be used for "political purposes," and some states explicitly ban
using voting records for "commercial purposes." The co-op and its
clients must abide by these rules.
But state political data laws do not apply to the information about voters that the party itself has gathered.
"Generally, information freely provided to the party by the voter, or
data about who participated in a primary [that the party collects] is
not subject to any prohibition on it being sold," said Karl Sandstrom, a
former vice-chairman of the Federal Elections Commission and an
attorney for the co-op.
This means Democrats are free to sell the opinions voters give to
campaign canvassers to credit card companies or marketing firms.
Whether they will choose to do this isn't certain. Martin, the
Minnesota Democratic chairman, said that party leaders will have to
weigh the risks of any potential deal.
"Obviously, we know we could make money off our file, but it always comes back to the question of, at what cost?" Martin said.
He said he would evaluate commercial deals on a case-by-case basis.
"I'm not opposed to selling the data if it's a corporation who shares
our values and is going to do some good work with that data."
Wal-Mart, for instance, would not make the cut, he said.
Whether corporations are interested in buying the co-op's data remains
to be seen. Wal-Mart did not respond to a request for comment about
whether it would be interested in buying information about its
customers' political beliefs.
Consumer data companies like Experian already peddle information about individuals' political beliefs
and donation histories — and also link this information to their
consumer habits. This November, Experian Simmons released a study
breaking down the political leanings of shoppers at J. Crew, Lady Footlocker, and more than 100 other major retailers.
But the fact that selling voters' opinions to companies is even an
option for Democrats is another example of how rapidly the data industry
is evolving — and how little information individuals have about how
their data is being shared.
In his "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,"
released last year, President Barack Obama argued that when companies
collect personal data from consumers, they should only share it in ways
consumers expect.
If a company decides it wants to share personal information in a new
way, Obama suggested, it should notify the consumers who are affected
and provide them with choices about how their data is used.
Although Obama pledged to work with Congress to make the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights into law, that hasn't happened yet.
Joseph Turow, a privacy expert at the University of Pennsylvania's
Annenberg School for Communication, said the possibility that Democrats
might repurpose voters' opinions for commercial marketing is problematic
— particularly because they had collected that information through "a
relationship of trust" with voters.
Both Democrats and Republicans have long traded information about
voters' opinions with outside political groups. Long-time Republican
activists have created a new group, the Data Trust, to manage the
Republican National Committee's data and coordinate data exchanges
between the RNC and conservative and issue advocacy groups.
Asked if the Republican Party sells the party's proprietary data to
retailers or credit card companies, RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowsi
wrote, "Absolutely not — hasn't happened in past and won't in [the]
future."
The Obama campaign's own closely guarded trove of voter information will be used to mobilize support for the president's agenda through a new nonprofit advocacy group, Organizing for Action, led by top Obama aides.
It's not clear what other groups may be given access to Obama's voter
data. Organizing for Action did not respond to a request for comment.
Staffers have said that passing on the campaign's voter information to
an Obama-focused nonprofit reflects the wishes of the president's supporters, although supporters were not asked directly about how the campaign should treat their data.
Sandstrom, the lawyer for the state Democratic parties' National Voter
File Co-op, said he doubted the co-op would actually end up selling
voters' opinions for commercial uses, calling it an "abstract concern."
Democratic Party chairs were not eager to weigh in on the issue.
Last week, ProPublica contacted 11 Democratic state party chairs — some
of them newly elected to their positions — about the National Voter File
Co-op. Party chairs in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, North Carolina, Nevada, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin declined
or did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
New Hampshire Democratic chair Ray Buckley, who leads the Association of State Democratic Chairs, also declined to comment.
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