Posted on 01/30/2016 4:16:23 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- Customized mass-mail campaigns from groups on the left and the right are using peer pressure to get out the vote by comparing recipients' voting records with those of their neighbors.
A first wave of mailers from a conservative group has spawned complaints about invasion of privacy and intimidation.
More than 2 million registered voters around the country recently received flyers in the mail from Virginia-based Americans for Limited Government. The "vote history audits" in the mailers show whether recipients made it to the polls in the last several elections, and list neighbors by name and address with their voting records.
A spokesman for the group said in a statement to reporters that the mailing "has one goal and one goal only, to increase participation in the electoral process."
Election boards across the country have been flooded with complaints. "They view them as an invasion of privacy," said Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the North Carolina state election board. Voters particularly don't like information about themselves being sent to their neighbors, she said.
One recipient, Jill Butler of Forest, Va., complained to The Huffington Post: "I think my voting record should be between me and not really anyone else."
Voting records are public documents, but haven't typically used so overtly in politics.
The Americans for Limited Government mailing also implicitly threatens to shame non-voters by sending "an updated vote history audit to you and your neighbors" after the election.
As it happens, the conservative mailing is about to be dwarfed in size by one from the liberal group MoveOn.org Civic Action, being sent to 12 million registered voters in all the swing states and in most congressional districts with competitive races.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
Alaska voters upset about public-shaming mailers, but experts say they work
"...Creepy or not, researchers say the technique works.
Letters like the one being delivered to mailboxes in Anchorage are among the most effective ways to mobilize voters, said Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York who studies voting behavior and motivation.
Political scientists examined the way social pressure could be used to influence voter behavior and found that shame was an effective motivator to get people to the polls, he said.
In the election cycles since the first major studies on the topic came out in 2008, groups have translated those findings to real get-out-the-vote campaigns, mailing letters and fliers that sometimes imitate the very letters social science researchers originally sent out as part of their experiment, Panagopoulos said."....
If you haven’t been voting, you should be ashamed. The “war on shame” is what liberals have been pushing on us forever in their “anything goes” culture. Shame is a very important, natural human motivator.
Send out press that he got 19 Million in the Bank and Iowa that that important.
Buried at the bottom: .........Whether Cruz's mailer will be effective in turning out Iowa caucus voters - for him or for another candidate! - remains to be seen. Massey was already a Rubio supporter and Hinkeldey was leaning that way. We'll know for sure on Monday."
We’re you planning to vote for Cruz?
I’d wager that Democrats’ use of thugs to “knock and drag” (knock on doors and drag voters to the polls) in minority neighborhoods is far more intimidating. They’ll canvas the neighborhood several times on election day to make sure you have a good excuse for saying NO.
It’s a “social media” world.
It works.
Trump uses it constantly.
Re: Dems they’ve given the “social grievance/i-want-to-keep-yours” crowd Obama-phones; so they have that covered.
Spin it how you want, this does not help your candidate.
It is another piece of negative news at the exact wrong time.
I predict Trump beats Cruz in Iowa by 7 points.
No worse than Dems using dead voters, jail or prison inmates or nursing home patients who are not aware of their surroundings much less what is going on in the world.
What is wrong with knowing Trump hasn’t voted in the last 6 primaries? Or is a big Dem donor and while running on the GOP Presidential ticket donates to the VA Dem Gov who tried to restrict gun carry from 25 states. And thinks PP does good things beyond abortion, which is it’s only function, not even sure if they provide the BC PILL. They don’t do Mammo’s or other women’s reproductive health issues.
The vote is Monday.
Yes, the vote is Monday.
My prediction is today: Trump over Cruz by 7 points.
Are Recent Iowa Polls Wrong? A Third of Likely Caucus-Goers Still Undecided!
"....With less than one week till the caucus, more than "one third (34.2 percent)" of those polled have yet to pick their candidate. 27 percent of those polled said they've changed their mind over the course of the campaign. The two most common factors for a voter switching their vote was their perception of a candidate's electability or learning something new about that candidate."....
Nothing you post changes my prediction: Trump over Cruz by 7 points in Iowa on Feb 1, 2016
If one chooses not to vote isn’t that also a right in a ‘free nation’? Urging them to vote is not the issue but using the deplorable mailer Big Brother-like tactic is over the top invasion of privacy.
Cruz now suggesting voter fraud in Iowa.
Vote early, vote often!
https://mobile.twitter.com/tedcruz/status/693238473785020416
I can definitely see where this would work at getting people to the polls.
I can also definitely see where this would work to make sure those shamed voters would cast their ballots for someone other than the candidate who sent them.
It’s a better political dirty trick than anything else. Set up a fake group and send out the letters on “behalf” of the candidate you want to beat.
The details for the forecast show 1-3 inches of snow Monday evening. The majority of the snowfall occurs after midnight early Tuesday morning; well after the caucus is over.
“Urging them to vote is not the issue but using the deplorable mailer Big Brother-like tactic is over the top invasion of privacy.”
Quite frankly, we’d be better off if those “undecided moron voters” didn’t vote because they generally contribute to the continuing failure of our country to get back on it’s feet.
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