My political party knows I haven't voted yet. How?
California; just got the SMS. How TF are they being notified of my voting activity?
Your voting history is publicly available (nothing about who you vote for, just whether or not you vote in a given election year). There have been several studies showing that messages along the lines of “Your voting history is public, make sure to vote this year.” Or “keep up your voting streak!” are extremely effective, I believe the most effective single messages we know of or at least the most well-known ones.
Both parties and countless civic orgs do this now, it’s been a major thing since 08.
The original experiments were randomized, but usually if you’re getting the message now you’re part of a target demo someone wants to turn out.
One day, I got a knock at the door from a canvasser that started a conversation with "Since you've voted in every election," which is how I learned that it isn't just voter registration information that is public, but so is the record of whether you've voted or not.
Have you considered they send those to everyone? And someone else who did vote is about to post "I already voted! Why did I get this message?"
Plenty of companies out there aggregating voter information -- see L2 Data for example.
Speculation: voter rolls are public, so everyone knows you’re a voter and what your registered party is.
Since you voted early the state must record that. Don’t they release counts of how many people have voted so far? Plus they would need to record you voted so they could reject any other ballots from you that might come in.
There is probably a record of which elections you’ve voted in (though not how you voted). There is in my state and with some basic info I believe I can look anyone up, not just myself.
So if your party has a list of their registered voters (they do, public information) then they could easily check the status to see if each of those voters has voted yet (public information). Combine that with your phone number from public records or maybe a past donation, and they’d have everything they need.
Most states make voter lists available (usually, for purchase) to parties, campaigns, and sometimes more broadly, and the list information often includes voting history.
General national summary is here:
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access...
It doesn’t list California as providing voting history, but the information available from California County elections offices includes voting history in every county I’ve checked.
But that’s for past elections, I’m not sure exactly how they get information on status for the current election.
In Wisconsin, the state provides a list of who has requested an absentee ballot, who has returned it, who has voted early, and who is just registered. These are updated around daily and can be accessed by anyone with the right knowledge (and possibly cash).
I'm surprised information about who voted is publicly available
Will businesses start offering discounts/bonuses for people that show proof that they've voted (under the guise of rewarding those that did their civic duty), but only in areas that are heavily biased towards one party? Technically it's available to everyone but only easily accessible to those that voted for the business' preferred party.
"The ground game" has always included "finding out if your supporters have voted yet, and calling them if not." Long before the Internet.
It's just that now it's much more efficient, more accessible to more people, and it isn't just on Election Day, but for the whole period of early voting. So that might be a good reason to stop releasing the information.
Some states release early and absentee data at the precinct level. Campaigners can glean a lot from this information, including modeling the likelihood that you have voted early or not based on your past vote history. With the exception of Utah (whose voter file is now opt-in), every state identifies which elections you have voted in.
How do you know they knew? Maybe they’re just spamming SMS’s at their list.
Could be a guess. I got similar message and it was incorrect.
I've been getting messages and mail in Oregon and I think they're just making things up. They even tried to shame me for voting in the general elections, but not the midterms. This is of course nonsense, but its probably easier to mail out a thousand of those than to research each voter.
Well, now you done confirmed it!
I'm not sure I could bring myself to vote for a party that did this.
Voting history is available to political parties and candidates.
in some states like Texas, your county posts your name publicly in a "voted" list. Its there for all to see without putting who you voted for
Maybe thats how they know
This should not be flagged.
username checks out /scnr