e-Mail to Utah State Republican Party Leadership Regarding Centrally Controlled Candidate / Delegate E-Mail Communications

Very early this morning I sent the following e-mail to the Utah State Republican Party Leadership. The e-mail voices my concerns over the State Party’s new policy of centralized delegate e-mail address and candidate messaging. The e-mail text appears below in italics:

===========> Letter begins <===========

Dear Mr. Lockhart, 

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kip Meacham, and I am the Republican Precinct Chair residing in Orem Precinct 27 (OR27). My purpose in writing you is to express my concerns with manner in which the State Republican Party is trying to increase candidate-to-delegate e-mail communications. While I laud the efforts of the Party, I believe the chosen approach will create serious freedom of speech, equal access, and privacy concerns you may not have foreseen in making your policy decisions.

By employing the e-mail management software from Constant Contact , the Party now has at its disposal lots of resources to manage e-mail communications including email templates, along with tools to build, manage and secure e-mail lists.

What it also now has is the ability to track and generate reports about the success/failure of e-mail delivery efforts, the number of e-mails opened by the delegates, etc.

So, while the software gives the delegates the following benefits:

1. It preserves the privacy of the e-mail address lists from the candidates.
2. It gives the delegates the option to “ opt out ” of receiving these e-mail communications.

It creates a whole new dimension of freedom of speech, equal access and privacy concerns for the delegates by:

1. Centralized distribution of messages through the Party. There are no direct e-mail communications from the candidates. Instead, the Party sees them first, lays the mail messages out for distribution, and has all control of the distribution.
2. An order of magnitude increase in delegate privacy compromise. The delegates’ privacy is compromised in that the Party can (by means of the Constant Contact software’s web analytics features) see which delegates are actually opening the messages, and if they’re forwarding them on.

For your review, I cite the following on what the Constant Contact Website says about the software’s e-mail tracking and reporting capabilities (text in [bold] italics):

Email Tracking and Reporting
Learn more about your contacts with eye-opening reports

Real-time email tracking and reporting lets you know how many emails were delivered, which addresses bounced, and why-within minutes of sending your email campaign. You also get reports on who opened your email, which links generated the most interest, and who clicked on each one. This valuable information will help you to determine your contacts’ interests, the best day and time to send your email campaigns and much more!

See who opened your email campaigns, and what they clicked on
• How many emails were sent and delivered
• What percentage of your contacts opened

See how your email list is growing and who is opting out
• How many contacts opted in or opted out
• How many contacts forwarded emails to a friend

Compare past email campaigns, get information on bounces, and more
• Identify emails that bounced
• Compare results from your three most recent campaigns

So, in a noteworthy effort to answer privacy concerns about e-mail address disclosure, the Party–not the candidates–will have all the information on how these e-mail communications were delivered, opened, and clicked on by the delegates.

By using e-mail management software, what the Party has done is increase the privacy exposure for the delegates as the Party will now know which delegates are opening these e-mails and how the delegates are using the e-mail messages–including knowledge of which e-mails the delegates are forwarding on to others.

If you consider the useful life of these e-mail addresses for a particular candidate versus the uses of the Party, I believe we have a much larger privacy concern by this centralized party control of the message flow–and the means for the Party to check up on the delegates’ e-mail reading habits. I know that’s not what I signed up for when I gave my e-mail address to the Party.

All this notwithstanding, there are alternatives to this approach that will enable the preservation freedom of speech and equal access for the candidates and the preservation of e-mail address privacy for the delegates without the potentials of analytics-based abuse by the Party (emphasis on the word potentials here). The possibility of impropriety is sufficient cause to reverse this policy.

I’m sure there are those in the County and State leadership who will see my raising of these concerns as obstructionist behavior or personal attacks. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not from the Party’s “lunatic fringe,” and I have no personal axe to grind.

My motives are simply these: I believe if the Republican Party is going to catch the fire and imagination of the upcoming generation, it must operate according to the rules of information flow in the twenty-first, Internet-based world we live in. Information must flow with complete transparency. The Party needs to understand the importance of this transparency to the next generation.

The old days of traditional public relations (which I have worked in professionally) and control of the message and messengers has long since past. The Internet took this from the public and private sectors years ago. If the Party continues to operate to this antiquated model, the Party will be perceived by the upcoming generation as oily, corrupt, back-room dealers, and it will die from a lack of new blood from today’s youth destined to become tomorrow’s leaders.

In my professional opinion, this “centrally-controlled e-mail distribution policy” is an instantiation of the behavior driving the next generation away from-not towards-the Republican Party.

As a 20+ year high-tech sector marketing and public relations professional, I offer my assistance in helping the Party address these concerns.

Please feel free to contact me to discuss this using my contact information below; and in the spirit of transparency, please feel free to forward this e-mail message on to whomever you choose.

Sincerely,

Kip Meacham
OR27 Precinct Chair

===========> Letter ends <===========

I am hoping for a response, and for the opportunity to help solve the problems I see with this approach.

Weber County Republican Party Does Transparency Right

Kudos to the leadership of the Weber County Republican Party! This is a model of transparency for the rest of the Utah’s Republican County Party Leadership Teams to follow.

Their Party Leadership has published the County Delegate and State Delegate lists for all of Weber County. (Per comments from David below, I have removed the links to these lists and notified the Weber County Republican Party Leadership of David’s legitimately raised concerns.)

Nicely done, Weber County GOP!

Privacy, Free Speech, Equal Access Concerns Over New Utah State Republican Party Delegate E-Mail Address Policy

For the first time since I have lived in Orem (over 14 years), I received an e-mail from the Utah State Party Republican Party. This came in the form of a message from Stan Lockhart, Utah State Republican Party Chair. The subject line was simply “Thank You” (you can read the message contents on the blog I write for my Republican precinct).

Since then, I have received three additional e-mail messages from the State Republican Party with the following subject lines:

• Message(s) from Candidate(s) for Governor

• Message(s) from Candidate(s) for State Treasurer

• Message(s) from Candidate(s) for Utah Congressional District 3

The e-mails contained messages from each of the Republican candidates for the respective offices (you can also read these messages on my precinct blog).

However, there was a not so subtle difference in these three messages when compared with the first one sent from the Party. The beginning of each e-mail contained the following text:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Utah Republican Party has chosen not to share delegate e-mails with candidates. To facilitate communication between candidates and delegates, please see the message(s) below from candidate(s) seeking the Republican Party Nomination. All candidates who will have contested races at the State Convention on May 10, 2008 have been invited to send messages via the Utah Republican Party to State Delegates. Weekly e-mails will be sent every Tuesday from the Utah Republican Party with submissions from participating candidates. This e-mail contains the opinions of candidates and are not necessarily the opinion of the Utah Republican Party. Each message was written by the candidate and should be attributed as such. Please contact the candidate directly with questions.

Also of note is the system the Utah Republican Party is using to communicate with the delegates. All four messages were sent out by the Party using e-mail management software from Constant Contact. (see the graphic below of the standard “Constant Contact” Footer) (NOTE: I can’t get the graphic to load from my blog editing software-I’ll keep trying to fix this.)

Constant Contact is a web service software product. The software gives the organizations that use it lots of resources to manage e-mail communications including email templates, along with tools to build, manage and secure e-mail lists. It also allows organizations to track and generate reports about the success/failure of e-mail delivery efforts, the number of e-mails opened by the recipients, etc.

So, what does using this software do for the delegates?

1. It preserves the privacy of the e-mail address lists from the candidates.

2. It gives the delegates the option to “opt out” of receiving these e-mail communications.

While I laud the efforts at preserving privacy, I have concerns with the Party’s intermediary role in communication between candidates and delegates. Here’s why:

1. The software centralizes distribution of messages through the Party. There are no direct e-mail communications from the candidates. Instead, the Party sees them first, lays the mail messages out for distribution, and has all data regarding the distribution and usage by the delegates of the messages.

2. The privacy of the delegates is compromised in that the Party can (by means of the Constant Contact software’s web analytics features) see which delegates are actually opening the messages, and if they’re forwarding them on.

The Constant Contact Website says the following about the software’s e-mail tracking and reporting capabilities (text in italics):

Email Tracking and Reporting
Learn more about your contacts with eye-opening reports

Real-time email tracking and reporting lets you know how many emails were delivered, which addresses bounced, and why-within minutes of sending your email campaign. You also get reports on who opened your email, which links generated the most interest, and who clicked on each one. This valuable information will help you to determine your contacts’ interests, the best day and time to send your email campaigns and much more!

See who opened your email campaigns, and what they clicked on

• How many emails were sent and delivered
• What percentage of your contacts opened

See how your email list is growing and who is opting out

• How many contacts opted in or opted out
• How many contacts forwarded emails to a friend

Compare past email campaigns, get information on bounces, and more

• Identify emails that bounced
• Compare results from your three most recent campaigns

Privacy Realities

In an effort to answer privacy concerns about e-mail address disclosure, the Party–not the candidates–will have all the information on how these e-mails were delivered, opened, and clicked by the delegates. By using e-mail management software, what the Party has done (intentionally or not) is increase the privacy exposure for the delegates as they will know which delegates are opening these e-mails and how the delegates are using the e-mail messages–including knowledge of which e-mails the delegates are forwarding on to others.

If you consider the useful life of these e-mail addresses for a particular candidate versus the uses of the Party, I believe we have a much larger privacy concern by this centralized party control of the message flow–and the means for the Party to check up on the delegates’ e-mail reading habits. I know that’s not what I signed up for when I gave my e-mail address to the Party.

There’s also a big potential risk of candidate objections (and perhaps litigation) over freedom of speech and equal access concerns in regards to candidate-to-delegate communications that this post doesn’t begin to explore. I’ll leave that to the legal minds who read this blog.

I have anlready communicated these concerns to the State Party Leadership. If you wish to do so, you can, too. You’ll find the necessary contact information for the Utah State Republican Party Leadership by clicking here.