A Sanders staffer was found sneaking around in a data base the Democratic National Committee makes available to candidates- but which can be customized by each candidate. That apparently was the problem. The way each candidates customizes the data gives hints about how candidate strategy.
The DNC is suspending the Sander's camp's access to the database. The Sander campaign thinks the DNC wants to give an advantage to Clinton, so that's why they're suing.
The DNC is suspending the Sander's camp's access to the database. The Sander campaign thinks the DNC wants to give an advantage to Clinton, so that's why they're suing.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) campaign sued the Democratic National Committee in federal court Friday evening following the suspension of his campaign from the DNC’s voter database after a security breach.
The suit claims that the campaign is losing $600,000 in donations each day that it does not have access to the data, and adds that the “damage to the campaign’s political viability as a result of being unable to communicate with constituents and voters, is far more severe, and incapable of measurement.”
The DNC barred Sanders from accessing the party’s voter file, which includes much of his campaign’s voter data, after a campaign staffer improperly accessed private data belonging to front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The vendor hired by the party to maintain the data accidentally created the security vulnerability during an update, the DNC says.
The Sanders campaign fired a supervisory staffer involved in the incident and has gone on the warpath Friday claiming that the DNC overreacted and is trying to aid Clinton’s campaign.
The suit claims that the loss of the voter file could “significantly disadvantage, if not cripple, a Democratic candidate’s campaign for public office.” It also argues that the agreement between the candidate and the DNC mandates that a candidate get 10 days written notice to fix any issue before the party can restrict access.
Vox goes further. They discuss the ongoing tension between Sanders and the DNC. They also discuss the data base in question - NGP VAN.
- Click here for: The feud between Bernie Sanders and the DNC, explained.
NGP VAN is a data technology company that allows campaigns to view a whole host of information about voters across the country who have voted for Democrats in the past.
The DNC owns the basic voter file, which it shares with primary candidates running as Democrats. This includes all three presidential candidates as well as anyone running for lower offices on the national and state levels.
From there, each campaign can take those voters profiles and make all sorts of models with them, usually to predict how persuadable they are or how likely they are to vote, say on a scale from one to 100. Models can also be used to predict voters positions on specific issues, which helps campaigns target them.
During Obama’s 2012 campaign, for example, staffers used this type of modeling to figure out which undecided voters to target for canvassing and which voters seemed less motivated and could use an extra push.
The data and sources the system can pull in are incredibly precise because they rely on detailed information about every voter — rather than something like a poll, conducted with a small sample of respondents. For that reason, these models are very expensive to build.
Campaigns share the basic voter file, so they’re looking at all the same voters. But NGP VAN puts up firewalls between them so each campaign doesn’t have access to the other’s modeling.
What’s key to understand here is that the data hosted on NGP VAN's dictates a campaign’s entire ground game, which both of Obama’s campaigns claimed as their winning advantage. Losing access to the system means that a campaign loses its own predictive models dictating which voters to target – but it also means the campaign doesn’t have access to the names of Democratic voters.
