Sunday, November 06, 2016

Looks like the U.S. GOP don't vet their email lists

The last few days I have been receiving emails from the Republican party (except for one who was Libertarian) looking for money.  I suspect they bought the list from somewhere and didn't check to see if the recipients is an American citizen (or a person who has a green card).  Google flagged all of them as spam so the time, effort and money was wasted.  Upside for me is that they all have unsubscribe which I used, hopefully they will take the request and remove my address.  It really doesn't matter as they are all flagged as spam by Google.

I checked the FEC (Federal Election Commission) site to confirm what I suspected.  Only U.S citizens can financially contribute (or those with a green card).  For the various emails (except the last one) they all resolved to one common URL.

I can understand getting the rare mail from a Libertarian candidate (or small 3rd parties).  Limited resources (money and people) means buying a list and do a blind mailing and hope for the best.  The Republican party being a major political party should not be doing this.  I thought it would be a well financed, well managed and well resourced operation that would run a tight scripted operation and vet all mailings going out and not buying a list and doing blind mailings.

So far nothing from the Democratic party for email.  Also, NONE of the Canadian political parties have done bulk emails to me.  That may be due to our anti-spam laws would apply to them.





















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