Who benefits from the pro-Hillary, anti-Obama movement online?

Posted July 7th, 2008 at 11:41 PM in Politics, Technology

There has been a lot of chatter about the supposedly large contingent of Hillary Clinton supporters who refuse to back Barack Obama in the 2008 general election. They’re a vocal group, but it turns out some of them might have ulterior motives.

Yesterday, I happened upon IOwnMyVote.com, one of the many online petition sites organized around the anti-Obama Clinton supporters. The petition asks for basic contact information, just as all online petitions do, becuase online petitions are really only useful to organizations insofar as they help build up an email list. (For more on that, see below.)

But the petition’s owner doesn’t keep the contact information for himself; he or she forwards it to the presidential campaigns. Sounds like it’s supposed to be nonpartisan and honest, right? Wrong. Only one of the candidates — John McCain — stands to gain anything from the arrangement.

For one thing, a petition compelling Democrats to stay angry at Obama is just an obviously bad thing for the Illinois senator to have to deal with. Sure he’s getting a list of the names of defectors, but the site is implicitly encouraging defection. (It’s like trying to help the police by encouraging people to shoplift and then giving the cops a list of all the new shoplifters.)

But beyond that, Obama already has access (theoretically, at least) to Clinton’s supporter lists. McCain does not. Every disenchanted Clinton supporter whose name and address reach the McCain campaign is an extra vote the GOP can then target.

So although “I Own My Vote” claims in its page footer that it isn’t affiliated with any campaign, I’m dubious that its owner has no dog in the fight. And since opinionated, frustrated activists are the bread and butter of every online petition drive, it could generate a lot of names for the McCain campaign.

2 comments  

2 Responses to “Who benefits from the pro-Hillary, anti-Obama movement online?”

1. This blog has moved : Chase Martyn on Politics says:

   July 8, 2008 at 2:50 am

   [...] Please bookmark ChaseMartyn.com now. I’ve already posted some interesting stuff about the anti-Clinton movement online and about the value of an email address to a political [...]
2. Info says:

   July 16, 2008 at 4:14 pm

   The names, not the contact information, will be provided to the presidential campaigns. The purpose is to be heard, not to do the bidding of any candidate. The names can benefit Obama as much as McCain if Obama wants to listen. The point is these are people who should not be taken for granted.