Report by Sean Fager
Last year, under Chair McArdle, the LNC switched to a new Customer Relations Management (CRM) tool-set . Their chosen CRM, which is receiving thousands of LP dollars each month [1], is Voter Gravity, a service which bills itself as a web-based platform that helps campaigns create and optimize walking lists, make phone calls, and deploy mobile canvassing applications.
The politically active reader will probably recognize a CRM as a tool that serves as something like a highly refined digital spreadsheet, maintaining information about voters and using streamlined analytical tools to make phone banking and door to door canvassing more efficient. The Libertarian Party, at the national and state levels, has spent a lot of time, money and effort assembling CRM data over the years to identify voters who might be willing to vote for Libertarian candidates, or be willing to run for office under the banner of the Libertarian Party. It is, in short, the Libertarian Party’s repository of information regarding potential voters and volunteers, a vital and proprietary asset historically guarded by both annoying digital security measures and non-disclosure agreements.
Voter Gravity, according to its CEO Ned Ryun, is ‘fully integrated’ into the RNC. Per his August 2015 public statement on behalf of the company :
“Voter Gravity announced today that it has fully integrated with the Republican National Committee database […] We’re excited about these API integrations […] This will allow any candidate or state party who chooses to use Voter Gravity on the front end to put data back in real time into the RNC […] the best way to [outmaneuver the left philosophically and politically] is to fully leverage all of our data technology for the center Right” [2]
To reiterate : According to the Chief Executive Officer (and Founder) of the digital platform that the LP’s voter data is being handled by, data in their systems can be made accessible to the Republican Party as a function of the software’s API. That data-exchange is, according to the Voter Gravity CEO, built into the software architecture that the LNC is pushing Libertarians across the country to use. And it is their stated intent to ‘fully leverage’ it for the GOP.
Ned Ryun is the son of Jim Ryun, former Republican Congressman. [3] He is a life long Republican activist – the founder of American Majority[4], a George W Bush speechwriter [4], a former candidate for RNC Chair [5], and currently a full-throated supporter and public advocate for Donald Trump [6,7]. His software is designed specifically for getting Republicans elected [8, 9] by identifying Republican-friendly voters. Entries for potential voters are assigned a “GOP Primary Score” to track their historic likelihood to vote in a Republican primary. [10] There is no equivalent “Democrat Primary Score”. (There is, of course, no “Libertarian Primary Score”.)
The Chair appears to have been asked about the incongruity of providing the LP’s canvassing data to an organization that proudly and overtly relays their findings to an opposing Party. Her response was that “If you are worried that we will secretly share your data with the GOP, please go to betterhelp[dot]com”. [11]
I could find no record of comments from the Chair or other LNC Board members actually addressing the substance of their constituency’s concerns.
It is conceivable that a service… designed from the ground up specifically to elect Republicans, which has API functions embedded within its software to automatically provide data directly to the RNC, founded and led since its inception by a major GOP operative, whose stock is largely owned by American Majority Action [12], which has been hauled before the IRS already for violating non-profit law in order to illegally provide voter data to Republican campaigns [13], which was discovered by UpGuard to be feeding data into Ned Ryun’s brother’s GOP-serving CRM software suite “Campaign Sidekick” [14] … it is conceivable that such a service is properly segregating their Libertarian Party data and their GOP data. It would be in opposition to the declared intent of Voter Gravity, to the apparent life long aims of its founder and CEO, to the welfare of its major stock holder, and to its historic tendencies, but it is possible.
I don’t think you need to seek a therapist if you feel a bit concerned about the possibility, though.
[1] In Chair McArdle’s words, payments the LNC makes to Voter Gravity are private so as not to put “our vendor at a disadvantage to negotiate contracts with their other customers/clients” https://groups.google.com/a/lp.org/g/lnc-business/c/o1oR6ZiDDOw … but the ongoing national-level payments are in the FEC filings. Voter Gravity get $3,000 of the LNC’s money a month. https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?cycle=2024&data_type=processed&committee_id=C00255695&recipient_name=VOTER&two_year_transaction_period=2024&line_number=F3X-21B
[2] https://votergravity.com/integration-with-rnc-database/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Ryun
[4] https://www.americanmajority.org/staff/ned-ryun/
[5] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/reince-priebus-rnc-chair-230594
[6] https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/the-ned-ryun-podcast/3048341
[7] https://twitter.com/nedryun/status/1351542120306397192
[8] https://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/voter-gravity-matt-schlapp-100644#ixzz4P3pC1iZG
[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20151012021653/http://www.commonwealthy.com/voter-databases-and-systems-with-chris-littleton-cw-26-transcript/
[10] https://support.votergravity.com/article/46-what-is-the-gop-primary-score
[11] https://groups.google.com/a/lp.org/g/lnc-business/c/o1oR6ZiDDOw
[12] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/263594713/202103199349311625/full See Schedule R, Part IV. Note that this also means that thousands of dollars out of the LP’s coffers are, under McArdle’s leadership, being provided on a monthly basis to a GOP action organization.
[13] https://www.commoncause.org/ohio/press-release/cmd-and-common-cause-ohio-file-complaint-against-alec-and-alec-legislators-for-illegal-campaign-scheme/
[14] https://www.upguard.com/breaches/campaign-sidekick-git-data-leak
In addition, entrusting the LNC’s information to a Republican-oriented firm was highly impolitic. The data was very likely handled properly, since the firm undoubtedly realizes that the LNC data list was properly salted. The decision will annoy some donors. The decision means that $3000 a month of Libertarian money is going out the door to a Republican-oriented firm, meaning that the firm’s fixed costs are now spread over more customers.
Over 80% of VG is owned by American Majority Action, too, so both the diffusion of operating expenses AND the profits directly benefit, ahem, “Conservative causes”. (See citation 12)
I wonder if this is how I ended up on Trump’s list. I’ve done nothing else to be on it. Made for a moment of embarrassment when I visited my parents for my dad’s birthday, given that my family are all 100% Democrats when they made a point of handing me my mail and pointing it out. I put it in the trash unopened and said I didn’t know how I got on that list. My brother in law said it must have been because of the libertarians, they’re close enough.
In the past I would have argued, but given the direction the libertarians took lately I just said well, I don’t give them money anymore either. Now I see he may have been literally correct. The libertarians are making me sorry I ever did.
I didn’t include it in the article because there’s no analytical value in an N of 1 or personal anecdot, but I’m on GOP texting lists by name now that I’ve managed to avoid til this year.
There are a lot of places our info could have come from though, it’s far from certain that it’s the LNC’s fault.
Mr. Fager is speculating about APIs that he has no knowledge of.
Frankly, it is more likely that the base SaaS is limited to specific datasets and those are isolated from each other, possibly even being only local and not in the Cloud, and the separate users have their own configurations and databases. That’s software engineering best practices at a minimum.
Ask Voter Gravity directly about their APIs and data partitions.
My speculation is the CEO’s declaration. It’s worth reading, it’s just a one page memo. As of late 2015, their then-new update sends canvasser data directly to the RNC.
https://votergravity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/PressReleaseVoterGravityAnnouncesIntegrationwithRNCDatabase.pdf
Re: compartmentalizing the data, “Voter Gravity data is cloud-based and highly secure with industry leading protocols”. Which I read to mean it’s in the cloud.
https://votergravity.com/features/#1439920493615-d088da48-dd94
If your Circle Of Trust for the LP’s data (and the above-referenced ‘protocols’ protecting them) includes Ned Ryun, American Majority Action, and probably Drew Ryun (considering the UpGuard report), then using Voter Gravity is a tolerable choice. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t.
For the Mises Caucus people who are excited about Trump, Ramaswamy, and Massie, three MAGA Republican politicians, supporting Republican candidates and causes with Libertarian Party data probably makes a lot of sense.
It also creates another example of a violation of the basic fiduciary duties of loyalty and care.