FWD.us: GOP Voters To Be Targeted By Data Scientists 422
theodp writes: "We are excited to announce that FWD.us and Hackers/Founders are joining forces to host the 'DEBUG DC' Growthathon on June 21st & June 22nd," reads the blog over at FWD.us, the PAC whose Founders and Major Contributors include current and former CEOs from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn. "This is a unique opportunity to push the envelope in online advocacy for immigration reform." The blog entry explains, "The machine of government is wedged, and is in desperate need of debugging. How do we DEBUG DC? Step One: Target critical legislative districts. Step Two: Data mine these districts to find registered voters who are registered Republicans who we think are likely to support immigration reform. Step Three: Growth hack ways to motivate these people to effectively engage their legislators to tell them they want them to call for a vote on immigration reform. Step Four: Measure results. Step Five: Iterate." The Eventbrite invitation for the event includes a call for Data Scientists who are "pissed off about immigration and want to fix it," are "well versed in statistics and data analysis," and can "infer voter sentiment from sparse data." So, how does this jibe with the outrage expressed by the FWD.us supporters' companies over unauthorized government surveillance?
Re:Rsults are results that are already published! (Score:2, Interesting)
Same here, I voted for Brat and it had nothing do with either candidates stance on immigration. It had to do with Cantor no longer representing the people of his district. He didn't send a rep to my polling place. If you read or heard the smear campaign he ran against Brat is was shameless lies. I could no longer stand a man so full of lies that he thought he could lie to me about a man who lived and worked in my area and thought I wouldn't notice. I know politicians lie but we should not stand for it. Send all the liars home on both sides of the fence, and please don't kid yourself that your party doesn't have its fair share of liars whatever party that is. Keep the good ones in your party send the rest packing.
Re:Double-standard and misunderstanding of politic (Score:5, Interesting)
Another example would be the mandatory drug testing put in place in Florida for food stamp benefits. After the pilot program in which less than 2% of those tested failed the drug test and were denied benefits, it became clear that the state was losing money and the program should have been halted. (I believe it cost them $100,000 more than they saved to test everyone, even charging some people a fee for the test.) A business minded fiscal conservative would have killed the program because it cost more than it saved. A social conservative would freak out because The Undeserving could get free food if the program was cancelled.
It's this divide in thought between the two wings of the party that drives the fiscally conservative Democrats crazy. They might be willing to compromise with the Republican fiscal wing on some things, but the social wings of either party cannot compromise because they each think the other is Satan.
Re: This will hugely backfire... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it possible that the average GOP voter doesn't like illegal immigration from a fairness perspective?
No, that seems quite impossible.
Fairness would mean that everyone get to go to the same schools and have the same healthcare, no matter how rich your parents are or where they were born. I cannot see how a republican would embrace that.
There's a difference between Egalitarianism and simple fairness.
Having the same schools, healthcare, etc is a egalitarianism.
Simple Fairness, however, dictates that things provided by the state be equal for all groups; but everything else is available if you want it and can afford it because you (in fairness) worked hard enough to earn it.