Yet Another Website

(via Daily Kos)

GOP Voter Vault Shipped Overseas

When the Republican Party clinched close gubernatorial races in Mississippi and Kentucky in 2003, it relied heavily on its Voter Vault database to get people to the voting booths. Though party officials are tight-lipped about what’s inside the Vault, they’ve acknowledged it contains records on an estimated 168 million voters.

PC World has recently learned that the major development work on the Voter Vault was done in India. Though the RNC began work on a national database of voters in the mid-1990s, the Voter Vault wasn’t ready to be put into the field until the 2002 elections. Two years prior to the 2002 elections, the RNC hired Advanced Custom Software (ACS) of Seattle to build a Web-based database to help campaign workers target likely Republican voters. According to information posted on Elance.com, an online directory of outsourcing firms, ACS subcontracted development of the database to Compulink Systems of Maharashtra, India.

…

The Republican party isn’t the only one using a massive voter database. Since 2002 the Democratic Party has relied on two databases–DataMart, containing the records of 166 million registered voters, and DemZilla, a smaller database used for fundraising and organizing volunteers.

DataMart, which would be considered the Democratic equivalent of the Voter Vault, is an open-source application created by PlusThree, a software developer with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City. Vice President of marketing David Brunton says PlusThree did not outsource any of the development work on the DataMart.

The Republicans outsource their work to India, while the Democrats use an application from a U. S. company. Hmmmm….

(via Blah3.com)

Kerry HQ vandalized again:

Burned campaign signs and apparent pro-President Bush messages scrawled in a tarry black substance greeted volunteers Thursday morning at Lafayette’s presidential campaign headquarters for U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Lafayette city police are investigating the apparent vandalism, which did not damage the Buchanan Street building other than scorch marks on the pavement in front of the building, but also involved the theft of campaign signs outside the building.

Of course this is nothing new. I remember during the 1984 election, Hitler Youth College Republicans would often brag about tearing down Mondale signs on campus and the surrounding neighborhood.