Gathering potential swing voters

[yesthattom]

Just brainstorming out loud here...

The Republicans are breaking the law by asking churches to turn over their membership lists to the Republican party to help their direct marketing and Get Out The Vote efforts. They’ve backed down, not acknowledging that it violates election laws, but the deed is done... now every church is going to have at least one person “not acting by the authority of the church, but doing it for God” unofficially turning over their membership list.

So what’s the liberal version of this? I could never justify secretly turning over the membership list for any of the organizations I belong to, but I know that it would be extremely valuable to have them added to the database marked as, “GLBT-friendly”. Campaigns could direct their efforts with GLBT-Friendly messages to these people. It would be effective, but completely unethical.

So what’s the solution? I wonder if we could start an effort where we all donate our personal address books on some huge web site that lets us mark people as being one of many categories. Actually, what would be more ethical would be a system like that but it sends our friends an opt-in message. That’s a bit difficult to do with paper-mail, but wouldn’t be as slimy as what the Republicans are doing.

Comments

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I would not regard as a friend anyone who put me on any list or database without specificly getting my permission first -- outside the context of the database itself.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

It seems like the Republican tactics irt churches has offended plenty of religious people that they would otherwise have been able to count on; it remains to be seen if this translates to people staying home in November, though.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I think the liberal version of this is not doing it. 'Cause, ew.

If we're going to snailspam our friends -- and I really, really would prefer that we weren't -- I think we should do it ourselves. Send for however many copies of the appropriate letter and envelopes that we need, scrawl a personal note on it, and address it. The handwriting makes it more likely that it will be opened, as well as more accountable since they know exactly who is responsible for them getting it. And no confidences have been violated, because all the campaign knows is that you have 20 GLBT friends.

That way there's no backfire of people highly resenting being put on junk mail lists or having their personal habits disclosed to a third party by someone they trusted. Because frankly I think even the opt-in message would be enough to piss some people (as for example, me) off.

of course, it's more work for the person than dumping their contacts file to an FTP site. But that, frankly, is my point. It's one of the obligations of friendship to deal with a certain amount of pitching for AIDS walks and girl scout cookies. But that is balanced by the limited number of AIDS walks and girl scout troops that any one human being has time to participate in. It is NOT one of the obligations of friendship to put up with impersonal solicitations from every cause my friends might happen to believe in.

icky, yes, but...

[arfur]

...what actually makes it illegal?

in the eyes of the law, I would think they're just an organization as any other, that may do as it wishes with its membership list. Is it something more than that?

[xeger.livejournal.com]

Er... you've seen the work that I've been doing with reputation systems, right?

[cpj.livejournal.com]

Well, I remember that time on Orkut when Wesley Clark was on my Friends List. :)

Seriously, the only decent thing you can do is bring the candidate to your friends, not the other way around. Just hand out dozens of little business cards or flyers or whatever that mention the candidate and their positions on the issues. Tell them where they can go to get more info.

Jesse Ventura ran one of the most successful opt-in email campaigns in the State of Minnesota.

Re: icky, yes, but...

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

What makes it illegal is that churches can not endorse candidates or be involved in elections except to say that they can encourage people "to vote" and give "report cards". They can encourage people to vote, but not say who they have to vote for. They can give report cards that say how politicians voted on issues, but they may not make a judgment by, for example, giving a grade or rating.
They may not spend more than "a significant amount of resources" on election-related efforts.