Reply #20: Depends on the state

[TayTay]

Massachusetts census lists show party affiliation (or unenrolled, which is independent around here.) It very much depends on the state. If your state has that info publicly accessible, as well as other items from the census, such as occupation and stuff like that, then this is a nice, nice program. If your state doesn't have it, then you can't do this or have to have your initial ground people gather this info.

We also learned, btw, that you have to bring paper with you. People tried doing this with PDA's that had the surveys and stuff loaded into them and it was a mixed result. Tech savvy places didn't have a problem with it, but some people thought it was just too creepy to have someone show up at your door with a hand-held device that had all this info on you in it. (Very X-Files.) Also, a lot of poorer neighborhoods thought it was the government coming after you for immigration reasons or for past discretions and such. We have to survey with paper.

In Mass, that info will be entered at night. (Canvass some, then go back and enter the info in the pre-assigned boxed on a grid on the state Party site. Not a big deal or a big time suck.) I liked this.

The deveopment work for this is done by Sage Systems, a company founded by MassDems. Here are some of the Dem web sites powered by them:

https://www.sage-systems.com/dp/new/email.asp?input=true
http://www.jillderby.com/
http://www.sage-systems.com/

You can see from their web site where they are trying to go with this. The biggest concerns are with those distrcits nationwide that are rural or sparsely populated. It is much harder to convass and track people there. So, the software and the people who use it have to adapt. (Okay, we're working on it in Massachusetts. In truth, a lot of developers for this stuff use Mass as a testing lab then take this stuff national. I guess this is because politics is intense around here and a lot of folks get involved, relatively speaking.)