DNC restores Bernie Sanders’ access to voter data

The Democratic National Committee has agreed to allow the Bernie Sanders campaign to regain access to voter files.

The decision, announced just after midnight Saturday, capped off a chaotic day in which the DNC blocked the Sanders campaign from accessing the national database, which plays a critical role in campaigns’ strategies and daily operations.

In response to the harsh rebuke, the Sanders campaign charged Friday morning that the DNC was “actively attempting to undermine our campaign” in favor of Clinton.

“If you look at a pattern of contact, we’ve obviously had concern about the Saturday night debate schedule and its impact on the ability of campaigns to get their message out”, said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager. He said without a quick resolution to the issue, they will take the DNC to federal court.

NGP VAN – which in 2008 turned inappropriate information over to the Clinton campaign in what was said to be another glitch – said that even with the bug one campaign would not be able to export the data of another campaign – contradicting DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who told CNN that Sanders staffers “not only viewed it, but they exported it, and they downloaded it”.

In a jarring departure from what had been a genteel contest, the Clinton team is accusing the Sanders campaign of stealing information about potential voters worth millions of dollars. According to Weaver, other staffers are being interviewed about the data breach. “At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor”, he said.

The question facing Clinton is how forcefully to confront Sanders about the actions of his campaign staff and whether to defend the reaction of the Democratic National Committee, which cut off Sanders’ access to the party’s voter database after learning of the breach.

Weaver said a tick-tock provided to the Sanders campaign by the computer vendor did not show that data had been saved.

“I would like to see another instance where a presidential campaign was locked out of its own volunteer data”, Weaver said. In addition, the campaigns said the choice to hold them on Saturday nights, a slot with relatively low television ratings, is further evidence of the party leadership’s pro-Clinton bias. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sued the Democratic National Committee on Friday, alleging that the campaign was sustaining “substantial financial, reputational and political injury” as a result of the DNC suspending its access to its national voter file.

Uretsky’s LinkedIn profile says he is from Philadelphia and had been with the Sanders campaign since September, working previously as a data analyst with America Votes since 2011.

“Unfortunately, yesterday, the vendor once again dropped the firewall between the campaigns for some data”, Briggs said late Thursday. By doing so, she would likely avoid alienating Sanders supporters the passionate liberal voters she’ll need to win the general election should she capture the Democratic nomination.

According to DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda, the data systems vendor, NGP VAN, alerted the DNC about the issue Wednesday.

Josh Uretsky, the aide fired by the Sanders campaign, admitted on MSNBC that he had accessed the information but said he was trying to figure out the extent of the security problems before reporting it to the DNC.

The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and the Democrat Party have reached an agreement overnight that will enable the Vermont senator’s team to have access to the party’s database.

“I believe that I took appropriate steps to audit and assess the security breach and that nothing I did was done in a way that it would give the Sanders campaign a competitive advantage”, Uretsky said in an email to The Associated Press.