How did that political campaign get your number?
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In the last couple weeks, Jon Tester and Elissa Slotkin announced for US Senate. I know, because they texted me – asking for $7 and $35, respectively, to become a “Founding Donor.” How did they get my number?
As someone involved in political tech, I can shed some light on the most popular question — how the heck did they get my email or phone number?
Common myths
ActBlue is giving out my email address! Nope. ActBlue is a payment platform, and they make 3.95% on each dollar donated, so they want you — and the campaign — happy and donating. Giving out your email address to everyone else who asks does not really help that, and they don’t do it.
A caveat: If you give to a group of candidates via a single ActBlue page, each campaign will receive your information individually. There’s no way around this. Each campaign needs to report its contributions fully to its supervising government entity.
The DNC is giving out my email address! Nope, not them either. The “Democratic party” is a very decentralized coalition.
The reality
Well, you gave it to someone at some point, and information on the Internet can and will be copied infinitely. Here’s how in the political context:
You provided it when you registered to vote. In some states, when people register to vote, they provide their email address, and it’s added to their voter record. Those records, known as ‘the voter file’, are semi-public databases regularly available to campaigns.
If you’re suddenly receiving emails from campaigns within your actual voting jurisdictions, this may be the cause.
The campaign swap. You signed up for a campaign’s emails. That campaign, under pressure to improve fundraising, traded it with another campaign for some of their emails. Both campaigns win in the short-term. You probably lose, as does the Democratic Party collectively.
If you do sign up for campaign emails, sign up using the plus sign append to trace back any swaps – it’s rare people take the time to clean these out.
A broker sold it, having bought it from a campaign or organization. Within the Democratic ecosystem, there are companies that buy and sell email addresses. Democrats.com, Grassroots Analytics, and others.
It’s just one of many services they offer: for $0.15-0.18 each, Grassroots Analytics will spam a potential donor for you via SMS.
Why?
There are multi-layered, interlocking principal/agency problems:
Campaigns and political organizations are resource-starved. Some can raise gobs of money (but the things they spend on, like television ads, are expensive). The thousands of other campaigns running for lower offices do not nearly have the fundraising power that prominent candidates do, and so look for any tactic that might work.
Misalignment of timeframes — The campaign just started and nobody’s signing up. What do you do if you’re a young fundraiser under tremendous pressure? Buying an email list is icky, but isn’t it better than if the MAGA Republican you’re running against wins?
Literal principal/agency problems — Campaigns tend to outsource their digital fundraising to political advertising agencies, held to account versus fundraising goals or commissioned directly on them. One, Mothership Strategies, is famous for its churn-and-burn tactics campaigns.
A/B testing to local maximums — Campaigns and agencies may make decisions based on short, statistically unpowered message tests as to what raises more money. It’s not ideal, but it’s hard to give up apparent short-term gains for uncertain long-term rewards. Facebook recently released a study on how sending fewer push notifications actually resulted in increased app usage, but only when measured over a long period of time.
Older and busy principals — “This is Nancy Pelosi writing to you one last time.” I got swapped onto Steny Hoyer’s AmeriPAC list multiple times during the summer. Steny is 83 years old, and might not be up on what the latest email acquisition practices are for his Leadership PAC.
Can this system change?
Well, it’s performance-driven, so if people stop giving, campaigns will stop. If they don’t stop, then in such a decentralized system, not much change can be expected. It’s also important that while Scam PACs and self-enriching organizations are prevalent, many of the organizations deploying these tactics are deploying the cash to good aims — to defeat often-extremist candidates, keep control of legislative chambers to pass sensible legislation, and more.