So what do you think? Could this group be hampering DNC fundraising?

[madfloridian]

We have talked about Ickes group here before. But the New York Observer is the first one to go into it in a negative way. I have said it might influence it...too many database fingers stirring the pot.

The DNC is rebuilding the Demzilla one that did not work very well at local levels previously. They are having to compete with Harold Ickes' private one. Ickes is an advisor to Hillary.

Angry Data Nerds Rain on Democratic Parade

The problem lies, specifically, within the geeky subculture of Democratic get-out-the-vote strategists and data managers—the guardians of the voter information that has become the lifeblood of recent elections. Just as the Democrats were making strides toward the ultimate goal of catching up to the finely tuned Republican micro-targeting operation, the Democratic corps of data nerds became engaged in a low-grade civil war, trading old allegations of miscues and strategic gaffes in the run-up to the 2004 election.

The result of the schism, operatives on both sides of the divide now warn, could be a severe blow to the party’s long-term prospects: Even if the Democrats win in 2006—on the strength, presumably, of the extraordinary confluence of bad news for the G.O.P.—they’ll be left in the dark by 2008, at which time a better-organized and more unified Republican machine will take the majority right back.

“You know, the D.N.C.’s competition is not the people who were there three years ago,” said one data manager who was there then. “It’s the R.N.C.”

Much of the fighting stems from a project launched in April by Hillary Clinton advisor Harold Ickes. The consultancy, now called Catalist, is staffed in part by data managers swept out of the Democratic National Committee by current chair Howard Dean.

They say that in pursuing his wide-ranging “50-state” organizing strategy, Dr. Dean may be courting the same state-party disarray that plagued the party’s data-management plans prior to the Terry McAuliffe years. Meanwhile, the tech savants associated with Dr. Dean say that Mr. Ickes’ group is draining vital resources from their own data-crunching work. Some of them have suggested that it is actually an attempt by the 2008 Hillary campaign to sidestep the national organization’s apparatus entirely, a charge that Catalist insiders dismiss out of hand.

So the ones who were working on the old DNC database are forming another one to compete with the DNC. Dean talked about this on Late Edition several months ago...he said legally the DNC could not use the private one.

Note that the comment about Hillary is attributed not to Howard Dean but to his tech "savants"...who are actually pretty capable guys.

I can't imagine this really helps DNC fundraising at this crucial time, but then as I have been often told....I am not very smart about strategy. I lead from the heart and soul too much.

[madfloridian]

1. More.

Article estimates the remaking of the database costing the DNC at least 8 million.

"But tech insiders currently associated with the D.N.C. estimate that the committee spent as much as $8 million to scrub up and fill in the voter data that was handed over to the Dean regime, most of which is in a main database known as VoterFile. Not only had information gone missing, they said, but the data in hand was not of high quality. “There were people in Florida listed as being in the city of ‘Fort’ and the county of ‘Lauderdale,’” recalled Ben Self, who now oversees VoterFile for the D.N.C.

Mr. Self also said the quality of the inherited addresses and phone numbers—the most basic information that get-out-the-vote shock troops rely on—was unacceptably weak."

The article further states money that the D.N.C. saves in streamlining such costly data operations will theoretically flow back into state party organizing drives in the grassroots party-building effort that Dr. Dean calls his 50-state strategy.

[madfloridian]

2. I wrote about this in March, when Dean discussed it on CNN.

Dean discusses the Ickes database with Wolf on CNN

He also discussed the database being firmed up at the DNC.

BLITZER: Speaking of infrastructure, and there's a lot that goes into winning elections, there was a little bit of a stir this week. Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton and to Bill Clinton, he was a former White House deputy chief of staff under Bill Clinton, let me read to you what The Washington Post wrote on Wednesday: "Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence that the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean is ready to compete with Republicans on the technological front." What he's trying to do, and our Mary Snow reported it this week as well, is he's trying to create some new computer statistics, some new technology to help someone like Hillary or someone else move down the road in 2008 to get the kind of advantage they need to recapture the White House.

DEAN: We looked at what they're doing. It's a fine thing for outside -- for in terms of outside organizations. But the Democratic National Committee has to be the one that develops the voter file to be used by Democratic candidates. That's the law. We now have, based on what my predecessor did in terms of gathering information, we now have a technological platform that will do that.

BLITZER: But he says the database isn't good enough, and that's why he wants to create another one. We're talking about Harold Ickes.

DEAN: The database is very, very good. I brought my own technological people from my campaign to do it. And one thing, you may or may not have liked what I did in the campaign, but nobody argues with the technical skills of my folks.

And we brought them in. They're creating what needs to be done, and we'll have that ready, not just for senators and Congressmen. It has to be ready for mayors, for city councilors, for state representatives. You can't win the presidency unless you can start doing what we're now doing in places like Mississippi and Alabama and Missouri and Utah. We're now starting to win races on the ground.

[SharonAnn]

3. I think Dean's right. The information belongs with the DNC. And it

is everyone's job to feed back updates and corrections. Because without that, we die.

We've got some of the same issues here at the local level and the state level. I've got phone numbers that are more current than the Election Commission files and the State Democratic Party files. I ended up creating a separate field in the database for "my" phone numbers. It's the one the voter was last reached at. When we phone bank and a number is no longer correct then we try to track down the current phone number. When we find it, we update that field in the database.

Any time I make information abvailable I provide both phone numbers. The one from the Election Commission AND the one I have, if I have a different one.

Accurate data is gold. A database should be a gold mine, but if it's not accurate then it's "fool's gold".

[madfloridian]

4. He wants to make it free to local candidates.

Comments on the need for a DNC owned voter file available and free to local candidates

"We're building a different kind of voter file. Because campaigns have not been continuous in our party, you pay a lot of a voter file, use it, then it disappears after the election. Candidates are generally very protective of their voter files. May be good for the candidate, but not good for the Democratic Party. Voter files do better the more you use them.

We are building an online voter file, we giving it away free to the state parties. The state parties set the rules for who gets it and how it can be used in their state. (I have a new appreciation for voter files, since hubby and I are starting to use one, get tallies, and figure out who and how to canvass with limited human resources in a very conservative area.)

The DNC will retain ownership of the database, and the local candidates will have use of it. Uploads and changes go to the DNC and stay in the database. His ultimate idea is that with this voterfile accessible at local levels throughout the country, then by the presidential race there is no need to pay for a 20 million dollar voterfile."