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May 23, 2005
Campaign finance mailing list hygiene
Mrs. Guesswork just got an offer to:join President Bush, Laura and the entire Republican Congressional leadership as they gather on the evening of June 14th here in Washington D.C.For a small donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee of course... And will you allow all of us to recognize and honor the important role you have played over the years?
There's just one minor problem here. Mrs. Guesswork definitely hasn't played any important role in aiding President Bush, because.... Mrs. Guesswork isn't a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident and so couldn't donate any money to the the Republican National {Senatorial,Congressional} Committee even if she wanted to. If you're wondering how that guy on the terrorist watch list got hit up for money by the Republicans, you've pretty much got your answer: bad mailing list hygiene. On the other hand, isn't it kind of comforting that the Republicans don't have--or aren't using--your personal information to scrube their mailing list?
Posted by ekr at May 23, 2005 8:14 PM | Filed under:
Comments
It is not just Republicans that have sloppy lists. I use to receive campaign donation requests to help Hillary in NY. Except, I've never lived there nor am I registered with her party.
You are right that in one way it is comforting that the party doesn't have access to the "real" information. However, I guess a party donor should be upset that the parties spend a large amount of money sending mail to people who shouldn't get it.
Posted by: Grumpy at May 24, 2005 5:13 AM
Well, you don't know that they don't know the information, and choose to ignore it anyway. (If they do happen to be caught, and they claim that they didn't know, don't they simply have to give the money back? It'd seem like there's a disincentive to really scrub the list of ineligible donors (as opposed to unlikely donors))
Posted by: Brian Palmer at May 25, 2005 12:09 AM