From the courthouse to the White House, political advertisers are matching voter files with personal information gleaned from commercial data sources, their own member records, or records of
like-minded groups. Included in those appended files are e-mail addresses. So, whether it's perceived as free speech or invasive spam, we can count on more political e-mail.
E-mail security and
anti-spam company MailFrontier last month predicted that over 1.25 billion political spam e-mails will hit inboxes of registered voters during this election season. According to the firm's Anti Fraud
Product Manager, Andrew Klein, so-called political spam currently comprises less than one percent of all unsolicited e-mail tracked by MailFrontier. However, Klein suspects the amount of political
spam will increase as November nears, "because at the end of the day, it's cheap--a whole lot cheaper than TV."
The thing is, one voter's political spam is another's free speech. In fact, the
federal Can-Spam Act outlaws only unsolicited commercial e-mail, not e-mail sent by political candidates or groups. Thus, even if the e-mail recipient did not give his congressman or an environmental
nonprofit express permission to communicate with him via e-mail, that unsolicited e-mail is legal.
"We're doing everything we can to make sure people who receive political e-mail want to receive
it," stresses Rebecca Donatelli, partner at Connell Donatelli, Inc., a joint e-mail appending and Internet campaign venture that matches national voter files with personal information, including
e-mail addresses for Republican campaigns. After working with Senator Arlen Specter's winning Republican primary campaign in Pennsylvania this year, Donatelli believes that sending e-mails to 300,000
registered voters who had voted in previous Republican primaries "had some impact" on that tight election. The e-mail addresses used were purchased from a commercial opt-in database company. "The
[Specter] campaign manager was very forward-looking and wanted to match the voter file with e-mail addresses," explains Donatelli, who claims there was "very little pushback" from spam-weary
recipients. Such unsolicited e-mails, contends Donatelli, are "free speech," and just another medium for political message dissemination. Some political candidates have already come under fire for
sending unsolicited e-mail, including Elizabeth Dole during her 2002 U.S. Senatorial bid and Aaron Russo, failed candidate in this year's Libertarian presidential primary. The Kerry-Edwards campaign
fell victim to a spam-offshoot scam known as phishing, by which thieves masquerade as legitimate businesses--or in this case, political campaigns. Evidently, two bulk e-mail campaigns were sent on
August 1 by pranksters soliciting donations; the Kerry camp reportedly requested a Justice Department investigation into the matter. Earlier this month Rob Stuart, SVP of nonprofit consulting firm
Advocacy, Inc., sent a special offer to nonprofit groups encouraging them to match their membership data with voter files and team up with other groups to reduce costs. The message read: "Up to 40% of
the people on non-profit groups' lists might not be registered to vote," adding: "Information about voting patterns for those who are registered can be very valuable in identifying volunteers and
activists because there is a high correlation between voting frequency and activism." According to the deal, lists of up to 100,000 files were appended for $10,000, and lists of 300,000 files or more
cost $25,000. The message noted that although most nonprofits can't endorse specific candidates or campaigns, they can "promote civic engagement by ensuring that their members are registered to vote."
According to Stuart, Advocacy, Inc. has 26 million e-mail addresses tied to voter files nationally, or about 70,000-80,0000 per voter district. Information stored in voter files varies by state, and
can include a voter's name and physical address, party registration, registration date, and history in terms of which elections voters cast ballots in. While he admits that political campaigns--often
slow to adopt innovative technologies--will spend "a lot more money" on direct mail outreach than e-mail and other interactive strategies, Stuart believes that "there are candidates that will
experiment, and I think there will be a number of successes." As voter file and e-mail appending proliferates, the "speech or spam?" question will continue to be raised. But perception is what counts,
according to MailFrontier's Klein. "If a company did the same thing, a fair number of folks would consider that spam," he argues. "Just because it's political doesn't change people's perception."