DNC suspends Sanders party’s voter file program

The NDC blocked Sanders’ campaign use of the voter database after his staffers allegedly exploited a brief breakdown of the firewall in the system to access information from front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Sanders campaign has agreed to fully cooperate with the continuing DNC investigation of this breach.

The DNC decision to let Sanders use his own database came after the national party was barraged with outraged messages from grassroots supporters of Sanders.

“Bernie Sanders’ campaign is transformative for America”, his campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” Friday.

The breach occurred when the vendor, NGP VAN, which supplies access to the database of voter information for both campaigns dropped the firewall, and at least one Sanders campaign staffer accessed Clinton campaign voter data. He said without a quick resolution to the issue, they will take the DNC to federal court.

The Clinton campaign, for its part, applauded the DNC’s move – but called for an independent audit to take place. Transparency at the DNC is essential. “They have, in fact, stored the data that they found on the file, data that belonged to us”. The accused staffer, Josh Uretsky, Sanders’ national data director, was sacked from the campaign.

The Sanders campaign filed an injunction in U.S. District Court last night claiming they’re losing $600,000 a day by not having the data and that the DNC has no power to take it away.

“All of the DNC and Hillary and Bernie campaigns are taking this very, very seriously”, Buckley said on Boston Herald Radio’s “NewsFeed” show yesterday.

Weaver said the leadership of the DNC has used the incident to prohibit access to their own information, which is a vital element in any campaign, labeling the event as sabotage to their campaign, which, according to him, is one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in modern history. The massive database is one that all candidates, from the federal down to the local level, have access to in order to build contact lists, voter models and more.

The campaigns then add their particular information collected by field workers and volunteers; when the program is functioning right this information, can’t be obtained by other campaigns. “Their staff stole data from their campaign and they are now fundraising off it”.

“This information is really key to our campaign and our strategy”, said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. That signal of a potential civil war between Sanders’ grassroots campaign and the establishment DNC sparked outcry online.

DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz released a statement early Saturday morning that said the will be restored after the Sanders campaign complied with its request, but that the party “will continue to investigate to ensure that the data that was inappropriately accessed has been deleted and is no longer in possession of the Sanders campaign”.

Uretsky told CNN that he was not trying to look at Clinton’s data and denied that voter file information had been downloaded.

“New Hampshire is likely to be a swing-state once again, and if all the Sanders’ supporters just stay home and it’s a close race, that could make all the
difference”.

Sanders, Clinton and a third candidate, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, will debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Saturday night. Sanders has been lagging behind Clinton, with 29 percent support to her 60 percent in recent Reuters/Ipsos polling.