35 Comments - Spliff - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:08 am: Credit cards? - Oswego Willy - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:10 am: “The Hope is that by Rauner taking over the apparatus, Raunerites will take over the Illinois House and Illinois Senate. With IllinoisGo now gone, more money and resources, for the Party Rauner now owns, will be geared for a Raunerite agenda better.” - Annonin' - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:11 am: Sounds like the ultra groovy websites of the oh so successful Lee Daniels/Cross era….another potent Woo Woo from the CarWashKing - Ghost - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:11 am: This is wjere Madigan is doing huge harm to the dems. his iron grip in his out moded database will cause harm in the future. He needs to modernize it and lossen his grip. - wordslinger - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:13 am: It’s vital stuff, as the Obama campaign proved in 2012. But Schneider might not want to be so descriptive: –Schneider: we know more about voters than you like to think; we get info from your credit cards, the cable tv channels you watch– - Honeybear - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:13 am: Somewhere in Illinois, several libertarians just passed out, 2 are wondering the streets dazed, and 1 just became incontinent of bowel and bladder. - Honeybear - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:15 am: Isn’t that kinda……….collectivist? - Anonymouth - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:15 am: === We get info from your credit cards === Whaaaat? What type of info? This is some truly scary stuff. - Graduated College Student - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:21 am: –Schneider: we know more about voters than you like to think; we get info from your credit cards, the cable tv channels you watch– Surely the information about this information will not find its way to swing voters that the Democrats have identified. Schneider forgot he was not in the board room, didn’t he. - illinois manufacturer - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:23 am: Very collectivist….I think the credit card data is out there for purchase. I think that is what the NSA did….. - JS Mill - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:23 am: ILGOP is now….Big Brother??! - Touré's Latte - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:24 am: After reading this I blew in a call to a Republican pal and had her read this. This is news to her. She has not seen nor heard anything, and mused that this was another step to separate the elected officials from the voters, and to strengthen defenses against grassroots challengers that the ILGOP hates so much. Paraphrasing: Spending our donations to keep sclerotic GOPers — that have been in office too long — in office even longer. - hisgirlfriday - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:26 am: Until the data being collected convinces Republicans to change the positions they hold that are out of step with this state’s electorate, it sounds like more of a bonanza for consultants and ad makers than GOP wins. - Matthew Vernau - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:33 am: Hisgirlfriday… you seem to be the only one who thinks this information can and should move the GOP closer to the middle. Thank you for the hope however thin. - Linus - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:43 am: Slightly off topic but related: It’s increasingly amusing to watch Rauner struggle to thread the “no comment” needle as he’s publicly namechecked at the Trump coronation by his state party chair - and his COO delivers a stemwinder for Trump at the RNC podium. A real two-fer. - Rich Miller - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:46 am: ===and his COO delivers=== Former COO. - A guy - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:46 am: The data collection has been going on for a long time and been used by marketers to decide how big a grocery store should be, what they should carry and where on the shelf it should be. That goes for every retail sector. Those money saving “Preferred Cards” tracked every calorie your family ate. Data capture now can tell you more about yourself than even you knew about yourself. It’s the nth degree of polling. Receipts don’t lie and they don’t forget. It’s nothing new. Just newer to this sector. - SAP - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 10:59 am: Makes me wonder if Illinois really is as overwhelmingly blue as it is portrayed or if Dems just had better infrastructure and ground game. - RNUG - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 11:00 am: It’s not just credit cards or preferred customer / buyer’s club cards, but almost everything you do. Your cell phone, which really means Google or Apple, knows where you are every second from all those helpful GPS enabled apps. Facebook knows everything about you … and what you don’t voluntarily provide, they manage to collect from all those cutesy “games” that slowly amass your birthday, etc. The only privacy left today is to hide in the mass of data by using different names and user IDs for each company and each site … or to be conscious of the data collection and deliberately provide false information to the data collectors. - Anon221 - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 11:17 am: This coming from the party that wants LESS government in your life! - Archiesmom - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 11:35 am: Is this why I get calls from the Tea Party every day? - @MisterJayEm - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 11:50 am: “Madigan is doing huge harm to the dems. his iron grip in his out moded database will cause harm in the future.” No longer true. A few years back, Madigan directed the party to adopt the same VAN-Votebuilder database system that was used by both Obama campaigns, and is now used by the DNC and all 50 state parties. http://ildems.com/votebuilder – MrJM - Ghost - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 12:22 pm: oh thanks MJM! - burbanite - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 12:23 pm: Rauner? http://thesouthern.com/news/local/state-and-regional/hackers-penetrate-illinois-voter-registration-database/article_6e58f325-367f-5f8e-aa78-f0b8224865cd.html - illini97 - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 12:45 pm: Anon221 +1 How does the GOP square “get the government out of my life” with the party knows what you had for dinner last Tuesday? - The Captain - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 12:52 pm: I’m surprised that so many here are taken aback by this because what A Guy said is absolutely true, this is very standard, common stuff. Not only are all campaigns doing this as the voterfiles have become nationalized but all the junk mail you get from private sector companies are doing the same and in most cases they were doing it first. It really wasn’t cost effective for campaigns to add this consumer data until the voterfiles went national. It’s rather expensive for only marginally better targeting results. Voterfiles already had age, gender, voting history, partisan primary voting history, precinct partisan performance, race (or likely race), marital and parent status, etc. Even with today’s advanced modeling scores you could get pretty close to those just using the above variables that have been available for a few decades. Until the national parties starting picking up the cost of the voterfiles and the data behind them it didn’t make sense for individual campaigns or states to pay for the extra cost for the consumer data for marginal improvement. But now that they’ve been nationalized you’re getting both the consumer data and the extensive polling needed to provide and test modeling scores. It’s pretty neat. The big new addition in 2012 came when the Obama campaign started integrating DVR data to figure out who is watching what so they could target ad buys directly at the channels/programs that the undecided voters were watching. How/when/where ads are bought/placed is probably the final frontier to really getting this right and I think the Obama 2012 team made some big strides there, it sounds like the money Rauner is investing for the Illinois data is along those lines too. I’d bet their team is having a lot of fun with all these great new toys. - Anon221 - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 1:11 pm: My biggest problem with this type of data mining is when they are able to have access to my voting history. They can try and buy my vote by buying my name/address, even my age. But I object when they actually are able to BUY my vote. And, since we don’t have open primaries in Illinois, that is not always accurate as I’m an Independent and that ain’t gonna change. - Me too - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 1:24 pm: Creepy. I thought it was bad when I just knew they had my voter file - Anon - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 1:48 pm: I’ve worked with voterfile data before and it’s fantastic stuff. However, one of the big downsides is data ethics not really being a primary concern for a lot of voter files. Voter files tend to wind up being shared across the board with numerous volunteers and other committees. When each one of those has access to voting history, that’s not a big concern. When each one of those has voting history and volunteer history, not a big concern. When each one has voter history, volunteer history, and past survey responses, not a huge deal. But if you start dumping in data — or information from data — related to finances, including things like credit card information and so forth, you’re creating a huge risk if the information is shared across the board with numerous entities. This could be a huge liability. - Anon221 - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 1:58 pm: https://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2016/06/16/publishing-voter-registration-data-must-balance-privacy-with-transparency/ - Anon221 - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 2:08 pm: If you don’t know what PII is, then you have no business rooting around in detailed voter files OR sharing them. There are clearances and ethics laws/training for just that reason. It is not something to be taken lightly. - Fairness and Fairness Only - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 3:46 pm: It’s unusual to see someone admit the sources so readily, but it doesn’t surprise me at all. I’m amazed that others are surprised by the data mining driven by purchase patterns and television viewing. - walker - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 4:08 pm: It’s progress for sure. But having the data and sophisticated modeling, and using it effectively for a candidate, are two different things. As long as they give up their traditional over-reliance on robocalling, I’ll be happy for the ILGOP. - Anonymous - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 6:16 pm: Rauner’s spending seem to help Chicago State Rep Dunkin. - Arthur Andersen - Thursday, Jul 21, 16 @ 6:22 pm: Anon 6:16, all the datasets in the world can’t “trump” a lousy candidate. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.