Title: Unbelievable – Ted Cruz Campaign Sends Out Personal “Shaming Letters” To Iowa Voters Source:
The Conservative Treehouse URL Source:http://theconservativetreehouse.com ... haming-letters-to-iowa-voters/ Published:Jan 30, 2016 Author:sundance Post Date:2016-01-30 08:24:10 by Roscoe Keywords:None Views:8202 Comments:41
The personalized letters target individual Iowa voters and identifies them as having failed to vote in prior elections. They are admonished and then encouraged to vote this year. In addition the letters identify the neighbors of the voter, and provides their voting history.
Assembling voter report cards and then snitching people out to their neighbors is truly a bad idea.
It's such a bad idea, I have to wonder why I haven't read it elsewhere. I notice Cruz's campaign is tight-mouthed about it but said it was a "narrowly targeted" mailing.
I think Cruz's deep-data operations have indicated he will get most of these votes if he can just get them to turn out to the caucus. And it does make people aware that their voter participation record is a public record that lots of .orgs and others (like employers) can get hold of.
So there may be some backlash but it still might be a smart move if they get more votes doing it than by not doing it.
Will try to find it again, in the meantime here's another... BTW I got one back in 2008, laughed and threw it away. When they called to ask me if I was going to vote that time I told them "The only good politician is a dead politician", needless to say it got real quiet on their end real quick and they hung up and they haven't called me back...
Shaming people to the voting booth - Study's letters ID those who skipped election 7:07 AM, Aug 4, 2006 | 0 comments
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Paige Nicholson opened her mail Tuesday and found something strange - a letter with the names and addresses of her and her neighbors, showing who voted in 2004 and who didn't and promising an updated list after Tuesday's primary election. Nicholson, 32, of Plymouth was one of 80,000 voters statewide to receive a letter about voting, part of an ongoing study into whether being publicly outed for not voting can shame people into casting a ballot. But Nicholson said she wasn't chagrined to have her neighbors told she didn't vote in the August 2004 primary - mainly because only one of the 20 on her list did - and it won't affect whether she votes Tuesday. "I didn't feel that embarrassed," she said. "I don't want to vote just to vote." But if the letter doesn't scare Nicholson into voting - she said she hasn't yet decided - it has sent other recipients scurrying to the polls, Mark Grebner, an East Lansing-based political consultant and specialist in putting together lists of voters for candidates, said Thursday. Grebner started the study in 2004 when he sent out a similar letter to groups of 2,500 voters before the August primary and the November election, and then before the 2005 Detroit mayoral election. Those studies showed that the percentage of voters who cast ballots in the group that received the letter was 2 percentage points higher than those that did not. That may sound small, but if applied statewide, that could mean about 150,000 more voters at the polls. "My suspicion is that one of the reasons we have relatively low turnout in the United States is it's completely private," Grebner said. "What I am trying to do is figure out if we change the context of voting to a public context, does that dramatically change voter turnout?" In the study, Grebner sent out four different letters, with each going to 20,000 people. The first is the one Nicholson received. Another tells the resident only of his or her own voting record. A third simply urges everyone to vote, and a fourth informs the resident that a study is taking place examining records of who votes and who does not. Another 100,000 voters will receive no communication to serve as a control group for comparison. The letters are not sent at random. Grebner is targeting those most likely to vote in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate between Michael Bouchard and Keith Butler, because that is the lone marquee race on the ballot next week. But the study has angered some recipients. Grebner said the voice mail of his business, Practical Political Consulting, is filled every hour with demands to be removed from the study. "I think it's completely invasive," said Nicholson, who called but didn't get through. "If someone chooses not to vote in my neighborhood, I don't need to know that, personally." Grebner said he's not trying to upset anyone and honors requests to be removed from the study. But if recipients were upset about this study, Grebner's next study could draw more howls. In 2007, he plans to target certain neighborhood blocks to receive several mailings like the one Nicholson received - before the February, May and August municipal and school elections. "It's just a continuous rain of mail," he said. Contact ZACHARY GORCHOW at 313-223-4536 or zgorchow@freepress.com. Staff writer Brian Dickerson contributed to this report.