Activists are planning a massive new campaign in advance of the 2018 midterms to get around “can’t spam” laws and “touch” the emails, phones and Facebook accounts of some 20 million who voted for the first time in the presidential election.
Armed with experts who can help them get around anti-spam laws, and with help from the creator of Google’s Gmail, the goal is to make those first-time voters lifetime voters.
Speaking at a Harvard University Institute of Politics “Leaders of the #Resistance” forum late Tuesday, the head of Vote.org said that her “first strategy” is to buy the personal information of phone, social media and email users.
“What we like to do is just by everyone’s private data and directly contact them on their phones. So that is our first strategy,” said Debra Cleaver, founder and CEO of Vote.org.
Then, she said, “We’re going to staff up and get around all the existing ‘can’t spam’ and telecommunication laws by hiring humans to send actual text messages.”
How do you make someone a lifetime voter? Get them to vote in presidential election and then very next midterm.- @debracleaver #ResistForum pic.twitter.com/ph4tWIEkPv
— Institute of Politics (@HarvardIOP) February 28, 2017
Sitting with the leaders of Indivisible, Civic Engagement Fund, Run for Something and OccupyAirports, Cleaver said she had other plans too.
“We will buy their email addresses, so we’ll hyper target them on Facebook,” she said. “And then I’ll see if we can partner with Google so that we can also target them when they log in to their email.”
Asked if she had a deal yet with Google, Cleaver said, “the creator of Gmail is one of our big funders. I’m going to shoot him a text message…it’s literally going to say, ‘I need a favor from you, don’t say no.'”
Her plan includes at least one mailer to those 20 million in a campaign to “touch” each voter five times via their phone, computer, social media and post box.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
