Voter for Sale
By Aaron
Pressman
Issue Date:
Nov 13 2000
Aristotle knows your name, address and political affiliation.
Now it wants to sell its data on 150 million voters to online marketers.
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WASHINGTON
- When members of Congress run
for re-election, more than half rely on the services of a small San Francisco
firm for critical information about voters in their districts. Aristotle
International, (dossier) founded in 1983 in an office around the corner from
the Capitol, caters to senators and representatives by offering access to the
names and addresses of 150 million registered voters, the largest such database
available.
Now after almost 20
years of serving the political elite, Aristotle hopes to exploit the Internet
market. The company has begun to sell its voter database to Web sites that use
the information to better target advertisements and e-mail at consumers.
Soon, the voter lists
will be offered in a service to verify the age and identity of prospective
customers for sites that sell alcohol and other adult products. Aristotle has
filed for an initial public offering to boot.
But the notion of Web
marketers invading the sanctity of the voting booth could strike a raw nerve
among policy makers, potentially making Aristotle's plans to commercialize
voter registration lists the latest flash point in the ongoing debate over
online privacy. Already 25 states, including California, Georgia and
Pennsylvania, prohibit the commercial use of voter registration records.
Despite the looming
controversy, Aristotle's database is likely to be highly coveted by
advertisers. The company already has signed deals with MatchLogic, a leading
player in the banner ad-serving market, and VeriSign (VRSN), one of the top
providers of online identity authentication.
Aristotle has
painstakingly assembled its national voter database from hundreds of
jurisdictions, each of which has different procedures and fees for accessing
its rolls. The database also includes additional information gleaned from
sources like driver's license records and commercial marketing lists. Combine
all that information and the appeal to advertisers becomes apparent. If,
say, 25- year-old Green Party members from Portland, Ore., go online, Aristotle
can tell advertisers to show them ads for electric cars or perhaps the
collected works of Ralph Nader.
John Aristotle
Phillips, the company's co-founder and CEO, is no stranger to the spotlight. As
an undergraduate at Princeton University (dossier) in the late 1970s, he
demonstrated how to design an atomic bomb using information available in public
documents. That drew the attention of the CIA, FBI, foreign governments and
Hollywood. After getting into the political consulting business, Phillips
defended restrictions on the commercial use of voter lists and blew the whistle
on firms he said were violating the rules. At the time, he bragged about
playing "extreme hardball."
This time around, it
may be state election boards that decide to play tough with Phillips.
Current restrictions
on the commercial use of voter records could dramatically curtail Aristotle's
ambitions to market its database online. "They couldn't do that here,"
declares Shad Balch, a spokesman for the elections division of the California
secretary of state's office. "The rule is you can only use [voter lists]
for governmental, political and scholarly purposes."
Possible controversy
over the commercial use of voter lists torpedoed the company's previous efforts
to combine voter information with e-mail addresses collected by America Online
(dossier) and Microsoft (MSFT). Aristotle now is buying e-mail addresses from
MatchLogic, a unit of Excite@Home (ATHM).
Aristotle executives
declined to be interviewed, citing the IPO "quiet period." But in its
Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the company concedes the legality
of using voter data from states like California remains unknown. "It is
likely that some changes or exemptions to the applicable laws may be
required," executives stated.
Many states are
re-evaluating public records laws, but with an eye toward restricting access to
protect individual privacy. Some states that have been most active on the
privacy front, like Massachusetts and New York, are ones that currently do not restrict
use of voter registration rolls.
In New York,
individuals have complained to the state board of elections when they discover
marketers using voter lists. "There are no restrictions now," says
elections board spokesman Lee Daghlian. "Sometimes when they find out,
people get a little upset."
A recent Supreme
Court decision will bolster privacy advocates' efforts to restrict the
commercial use of voting records. In January, the court upheld a federal law
prohibiting states from selling driver's license information without drivers'
consent.
California Voter
Foundation President Kim Alexander fears that even some election-related uses
of voter lists, such as targeting political advertisements at voters online,
could deter people from registering to vote. "A lot of voters don't know
what's been going on behind the scenes," says Alexander, whose nonpartisan
group supports online access to political information. "Once voters begin
to realize what's going on, I think more people will become more
concerned."
In its deal with
MatchLogic, Aristotle will allow MatchLogic to use its voter database to target
ads for clients like Procter & Gamble (PG). Aristotle, however, will not
provide advertisers with the voters' names or track their movements online.
The venture with
VeriSign is in an earlier stage of development. Eventually, Web sites will be
able to check the age of visitors by asking for a few pieces of data that will
be compared against Aristotle's voter lists. Customers for the service could
include sites selling liquor, tobacco or pornography. It's an odd mix with
Aristotle's current clients, which include most of this year's presidential
candidates and some conservative Republicans lawmakers.
VeriSign executives
acknowledge that legal questions in some states must be revolved before the Web
authentication service uses voter information. "There certainly are
privacy issues that we are very concerned with," says VeriSign executive
Ben Golub.
VeriSign is in talks
with Web sites selling tobacco and alcohol, but isn't ruling out porn sites as
potential customers, according to Golub. That may be good for the bottom line,
but it also may be yet another reason for states to stop to the commercial
exploitation of voter lists. And that would leave Aristotle back where it
started: playing to a political audience.
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