It's done all the time and is a common campaign practice.
Maybe that's true.
But it's in the NY Times, leading on CNN, picked up By the Examiner and several Iowa newspapers.
Cruz had to answer a question about it on the trail today.
I don't know how badly, if at all, it will damage his vote on Monday, but we should have a pretty good idea by tomorrow evening.
So far it appears to have cost him a point or two from what he would of had.
Baffling.
To suggest this tactic a bit “creepy” would be a gross understatement. It’s one thing to mail the recipients voting record/reminder to caucus. It’s quite another to juxtapose/expose that information with those of one’s neighbor’s. Imagine the manipulations such “public information” any candidate could use to “encourage”/”shame” potential voters to do or buy into?
Conservative means smaller and less intrusive government. This tack smacks of exactly what we hate about DC’s intrusive manipulations and Cruz should have known better. Ugh!
You can read about the practice in these 2 articles. Both conservative and liberal campaigns have used similar mailings since 2004 in many states. They claim these mailers are more effective than going door-to-door. You have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. We political junkies would not respond well to this. But a more disinterested voter, this might be the only thing that can motivate them. I do question how carefully they could target Cruz supporters with these, so I worry it could be motivating supporters of other candidates. I posted two articles about it earlier.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3390772/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3390778/posts