Surprise! You're Being Audited By The RNC!
Tue, 08/14/2007 - 9:00am
This is a weird little tale that comes to us from TPM Muckraker: the Republican National Committee has started sending out letters to people saying that "a recent audit of your Party affiliation turned up some irregularities." The letters then ask for money.
You can see the letter, the survey, and the ask stub here, also from Muckraker. The story revolves around a lifelong 83-year-old Democrat who received one of these letters. If that sounds like unusually unsuccessful targeting to you, it probably should. The obvious question is whether, rather than targeting Republicans who haven't given in a while with a faux-menacing letter, they're going after people who really aren't Republicans to begin with and faux-menacing some money out of them.
There's just something creepy about the tenor and the tone of a letter that uses words like "audit" and say that everyone says you're a strong Republican, and now you have to prove it with dollars. The enclosed form is a method of gathering information, so maybe they're going after unknowns in hopes of figuring out who lives where. The method, though — especially when it includes an envelope that looks like this — was in this case just weird and uncomfortable. Am I the only person that thinks "The Office of Strategic Information" sounds a little menacing, too?
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Ethics mean nothing to the RNC
By WhosPlayin
Tue, 08/14/2007 - 5:34pm
Oblivious Republicans called the Denton County Democratic Party HQ looking for me. I was disappointed when I found out it wasn't their hit squad after all - just a typical Republican fundraising scam.
I would also like to point out that a mailing like this might very well be used in a voter caging scheme - whereby Republicans take envelopes that come back in the return mail and use them to selectively challenge voters at the polls on election day. How creative to combine both scams and raise money while getting your voter suppression going.
Steve Southwell
WhosPlayin? Blog: http://www.whosplayin.com
Change
By John McClelland
Tue, 08/14/2007 - 6:11pm
I have an idea. Rather than going to your local Coinstar and losing 2 cents per every 10, why not just donate your pennies to the RNC? If they send a return envelope, just send it back with enough pennies that it weighs it down and they owe more postage to the post office for their services. Little old ladies have plenty of loose change, so this should work out perfectly.