DNC Bans Bernie Sanders From Voter Database After Campaign Exploited Software Error to Access Clinton Data
Sanders to make an announcement at 1 p.m.
In 21st century presidential campaigning, Big Data is big, with voter databases and modeling driving candidate strategy. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) shares a voter database with the presidential candidates seeking its nomination, and announced today it was banning the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from using it after finding the campaign had taken advantage of a firewall going down to access date from the Hillary Clinton campaign.
MSNBC reports:
The Democratic National Committee has barred Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign from accessing its voter database after a software glitch allowed it to review Hillary Clinton's private campaign information, a DNC official told NBC News.
The breach happened after a software error at the technology company NGP VAN, which provides campaigns with voter data. As a result of the glitch, "all users on the system across the Democratic campaigns were inadvertently able to access some data belonging to other campaigns for a brief window," DNC spokesman Luis Miranda said in a statement.
The DNC says four people accessed Clinton's data. The Sanders campaign fired its national data director, Josh Uretsky, who told CNN he was just trying to see how vulnerable the Sanders campaign's own data was. The Sanders campaign blames the vendor the DNC is using, saying it continued to make "serious errors" and said Sanders would be making an announcement at 1 p.m.
CNN suggests Sanders may call for the resignation of DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an influential 2008 Clinton supporter. A Sanders spokesperson told CNN Sanders' announcement would be "driven by what happens between now and then in our conversations with the DNC."