Beware Campaign ‘Petitions’

Karen Handel has been pushing her ‘petition’ against the ‘Obama Department of Justice’ for nearly a month now.

We’ve already seen here that the DOJ had a right to order her to change the Voter Verification procedure that had a 60% failure rate. We’ve seen here that it was actually a Bush Administration court that gave the original order, and that DOJ simply made the final decision in accordance with the Court’s findings.

But those aren’t my issue here. I’ve been busy on a side project for the past couple of days, but I wanted to point out something about this ‘petition’:

It doesn’t exist.

Don’t believe me? Go to KarenHandel.com and look for it. She encourages you to sign it without reading it – much like Congress is being railed against for doing. (Admittedly, I do not know if she has criticized Congress for failing to read bills before they vote on them.)

As AJC’s Political Insider pointed out a few days ago,

But each of them has taken a page from Barack Obama’s campaign handbook when it comes to building a database of supporters and contributors.

Both Handel and Reed have launched online petitions on key issues in their races that, in addition to building name ID, allow them to locate and establish direct lines to voters likely to make a difference. (emphasis mine)

Two points here:

1) Karen Handel not providing the actual wording of this ‘petition’ means that she could be asking you to sign ANYTHING. You have NO idea what you are signing. For all you know, you could be saying that you are, in fact, a ‘non-citizen’, as her voter verification process would like to label you. Note that this is just an example and I am not accusing her of doing so. I’m simply advocating that she place the exact wording of the ‘petition’ on her site just above where you actually ‘sign’ it so that at least you know what you are signing. You know, that whole ‘transparency’ issue…

2) More troubling to me is that this whole ‘petition’ is simply a way to get your information in her database, even if you otherwise wouldn’t want to be in said database. Now, according to my good friend Jason Pye, who worked on the Bob Barr Presidential campaign last year, this is something that all campaigns do, and even Bob’s campaign did it. I told him publicly and I stand by it now that just because a Libertarian does it does not make it right.

If Karen Handel wants you to sign up for her email list, fine! That in and of itself is not a big deal to me at all, and indeed, I’m trying to make sure I sign up for ALL the campaign email lists at the Statewide level and any at the General Assembly/local levels that I hear about as well!

All I’m saying is that a) the wording of the petition needs to be available so that you can make sure you agree with what it actually says and b) that campaigns need to be explicit that you are actually signing up for their campaign email list at the same time you are signing the petition, and there needs to be some mechanism so that you can do one or the other or both, whatever your actual desire may be.

Just please, be aware this is happening and make sure you know what you’re doing online.