Report: Voter analytics group harvested cell data used for “Covid-19 decree violation” score
Report: Voter analytics group harvested cell data used for “Covid-19 decree violation” score
The group Predictwise used the data to bolster Democratic candidate campaigns
An Oct. 2022 report by the website Reclaim The Net detailing how a voter analytics group harvested the cell phone data of millions of Americans for the purpose of bolstering Democratic candidate campaigns in 2020 has seen some renewed activity on social media.
Not a lot is known about who runs Reclaim The Net, which says its work is to "Defend free speech and individual liberty online. Push back against big tech and media gatekeepers." The organization’s website appears to have been registered by a third-party registration outfit based in the United Kingdom.
That being said, Reclaim the Net’s report on a voter analytics firm called Predictwise.
Reclaim the Net’s report summarizes Predictwise white paper, detailing how the organization collected and used cell phone data from millions of Americans during COVID-19 lockdowns to assign a “Covid-19 decree violation” score for each person. That score was then used to target voters for Democratic candidate campaigns.
Reclaim The Net also notes the extent of Predictwise’s data collection on over “260 million Americans.”
PredictWise doesn’t provide the exact dates when this location data was collected but its white paper does note that the data was collected during Covid lockdowns and used during Senator Kelly’s 2020 election campaign. State-level US lockdowns began on March 15, 2020 and Kelly was elected on November 4, 2020 so the data appears to have been collected during the first few months of this 11 month period.
Location data and survey data are just two of the many types of data PredictWise claims to have access to. According to its white paper, PredictWise also tracks “telemetry data” (which is “passively sourced cell-phone data”), media consumption data, and unregistered voter data (which contains verified data on over 50 million unregistered voters that’s updated daily and sourced from credit files and portal registration data). Additionally, PredictWise claims that “Crate&Barrel” (which seems to be a reference to the online furniture and home decor shopping portal Crate & Barrel) is one of the portal registration data sources it has access to.
In total, PredictWise says its data “tracks the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors” of over 260 million Americans – a figure that represents 78% of the entire US population of 333 million.
Were you or are you being tracked here in North Carolina by Predictwise? The odds seem pretty high given the above figures.
Along with its various project and whitepaper summaries, Predictwise also includes a list of some of its major clients - all of which are either directly a Democratic organization or a group affiliated with the Democrat Party.
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Included in the list is the Voter Participation Center, an organization that has long been criticized for blanketing states with millions of mailers that have in the past included pre-filled out absentee ballots, incorrect voting information, and voter registration applications.
The Voter Participation Center (VPC), is the sister group of the Center for Voter Information (CVI).
VPC and CVI sent out mailers to over 1.4 million North Carolinians ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Included in those mailings were 607,931 voter registration applications and 808,220 vote-by-mail applications.
Over 1.8 million such mailings went out to North Carolinians in 2020.
CVI and VPC are run by the same person, Democratic strategist Tom Lopach and CVI is well-funded; IRS filings for CVI show the organization raked in over $49 million in 2020. Around $5.3 million of its 2020 haul came from George Soros’ Tides Foundation.
According to Influence Watch, a project of the Capitol Research Center that tracks dark money in politics, CVI spent $533,820 in support of Joe Biden’s 2020 bid for president.