Fight Over Voter Data Roils Democrats Ahead of Election
Fight Over Voter Data Roils Democrats Ahead of Election
WASHINGTON—Democrats are in a deepening internal battle over voter data seen as key in helping get out the vote ahead of looming 2020 presidential elections, correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows.
The party is struggling to catch up with Republican efforts to collect and store voter data that allows politicians to directly target their voter outreach. But a growing battle between the Democratic National Committee and state parties about how to handle the process is threatening the party’s unity as the primary period approaches and candidates turn to voter lists to try to build support.
Under the current setup, state parties collect data and the DNC covers the cost of cleaning up and analyzing it.
Democrats want to upgrade the data sets, adding information such as email addresses, social media accounts and mobile phone numbers. The DNC has proposed mimicking the Republican National Committee’s data project, setting up a separate trust to warehouse the information and license it to all members of the party and allies, including super PACs and other outside groups.
But in an email Friday, the leader of state Democratic parties suggested rejecting the DNC’s plan.
Ken Martin, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, proposed to his members that state parties cut out the DNC altogether and instead work with a for-profit company with whom they have an existing financial relationship. That company, TargetSmart, gives state parties a commission when it licenses their raw voter data to its other clients. TargetSmart has worked with state and national Democratic parties for more than a decade, TargetSmart Chief Executive Tom Bonier said.
“My first priority and goal is to protect our state parties and make sure that our number one asset, our voter file, remains firmly in our grasp and control,” Mr. Martin wrote. He said members would hold a conference call about the matter on Monday.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez responded in a lengthy Saturday email to state party chairmen and executive directors, sounding the alarm about Mr. Martin’s alternative.
“For some inexplicable reason, this proposal would tear down just about everything about our current data structure, reversing so much of the progress we made over the past decade,” Mr. Perez wrote. “In short we are perplexed and dumbfounded by this proposal.
Since 2005, the DNC and state parties have shared a national data set of voter information, starting with voter rolls provided by state election officials and enriched by information that candidates and Democratic allies gathered during campaigns by knocking on doors and calling home phones. The more data points, the easier it is for candidates and party committees to decide which messages to use in communicating with different types of voters.
For years, Democrats were ahead of Republicans in their collection and use of such data, strategists in both parties said. That began to change in 2011, when the RNC, under then-chairman Reince Priebus, began building its own voter data set.
That set is held in an outside trust so that all candidates, party committees and outside groups can access it without running afoul of the Federal Election Commission prohibitions on coordination. The GOP voter data includes digital information, whereas the Democratic data is heavy on physical information such as home addresses and in-person contacts.
The DNC is seeking to start its own outside trust, just as the RNC did. Mr. Martin said that is legally risky—and puts too much power outside of the party committee. The FEC ruled unanimously that the Republican setup is permissible.
“The DNC doesn’t even realize they are potentially slitting their own throats here,” Mr. Martin said Saturday, adding that he is preparing an emailed response to Mr. Perez. “There’s nothing to suggest that an outside trust would act in the best interest of the state parties and the DNC. Many people have been trying to get their hands on this data for years.”
Under Mr. Martin’s proposal, the state parties would feed their data to TargetSmart and other corporate data partners, instead of to the DNC or its proposed data trust. The DNC is welcome to participate that process, he said.
But Mr. Perez said there are problems with that plan, including that state parties would have to foot the bill for tasks that had been covered by the DNC.
“The GOP was behind us, and now they’re ahead of us on data,” said Ron Klain, who worked in the Obama administration and now leads a Democratic technology incubator called Higher Ground Labs. “It is very painful to see that.”
Mr. Klain said he had been briefed on the rift between DNC officials and the state parties. The products developed through Higher Ground use voter data.
“I understand the skepticism of, ‘We are behind, so why should we trust the DNC to fix this?’” he said. “But the presumption should be that the DNC serves as the epicenter for the data. That’s worked really well for the Republicans, and it’s a good model for us to follow.”
Mr. Klain said Democrats have until about March or April to complete their voter data plans, because that is when state election officials begin releasing updated voter rolls.
Adding to the stress, the party is about to begin a presidential primary period that could include 20 or more Democratic candidates. One of the first things a presidential candidate often does is ask for the Democrats’ national data set.
“I don’t know why, in a year like 2020, anyone would contemplate blowing up a very important partnership,” said Mary Beth Cahill, a DNC consultant who has been urging the state parties to adopt the DNC’s strategy. “I completely accept that their priority is the same as ours—to win. This is not a way to win.”
— Ken Thomas contributed to this article.
Write to Julie Bykowicz at julie.bykowicz@wsj.com
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