From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Sep 03 2001 - 08:59:23 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> According to
> <http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO63256,00.html>, the
> "Citizens Against Government Waste" generates fake grass-roots
> letter-writing campaigns on political issues. Unfortunately, they aren't
> too careful with their list of signatories. Their latest letter-writing
> campaign includes dead people and fake addresses from cities that don't
> exist. Since the letters all look identical, most politicians aren't fooled
> when they get these "grass-roots" letters.
Funny thing is, Harvey, is that groups like this generally rent their
mail lists from the major parties, as well as from state lists of
registered voters, and mail lists quickly 'age', as people on them die
and move away, and as geographical names change. Many real people also
prefer to use 'boutique' city names that are not 'real' in the sense
they are generally oversized gated communities within a larger city.
Because of this, when a group rents a list, they need to send it to a
list processor to eliminate duplicate names, process it against the
National Change Of Address (NCOA) database that the USPS publishes
(which also keeps track of deaths), and correct addresses that are
inaccurately entered by the party they were rented from.
It sounds to me more like this group never sent their rented names to a
list processor for this cleanup work. What worries me is that this
indicates the degree to which dead people and fakers are on the lists of
registered voters around the country....
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