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No Democratic organization (DNC, DSCC, DCCC, OFA) really holds sway over campaigns. The DCCC would basically never say "hey, use these 2FA dongles or we're not

No Democratic organization (DNC, DSCC, DCCC, OFA) really holds sway over campaigns. The DCCC would basically never say "hey, use these 2FA dongles or we're not sending money" to a competitive campaign, and they definitely can't do that over personal accounts ("hey ditch Yahoo! or we're not running any ads"). Maybe they should, it's debatable, but there's a lot of things we should do that are on the spectrum of "unimportant in the grand scheme of things" to "infeasible".

idlewords 8y ago
Campaigns I have worked with are generally eager for this kind of training and would gladly accept it if it were offered. They are aware of the hacking threat and feel out of their depth. I think a good starting point is to simply offer in-person training at key points in the campaign (on filing, after a primary win, and before the general election).
- camgunz 8y ago
  Super agree, this would be fantastic. I'm sure there are people at the DNC and elsewhere who would happy to advocate for the (very small amount of) funding it would take -- as you wrote it should be a top priority.
dillondoyle 8y ago
The main DSCC and DCCC can and will force campaigns to use approved vendors and they could very easily enforce google apps. This only works where they provide $ or staff though as leverage. But generally I think carrot works better than stick
- camgunz 8y ago
  Kind of and in some cases sure (most obvious is union printing), but if a campaign says "no", really all the DCCC can do is threaten to pull resources (which they wouldn't for a competitive campaign). Really this happens more as advice and political pressure. But also consider downticket races like secretary of state or state ag. Then you're talking state parties who have almost no power at all. So yeah I think carrot is definitely better than stick, but there basically is no stick. I do think the DCCC should set up gapps for every general campaign and provide it for free, and should probably also offer it to professional Democrats, also for free, but this is a larger tech infrastructure question that starts to include organizing tech, website tech, VAN, email tech, etc. I personally think we should provide all those things, but there are a lot of (vendor, of course) politics involved, it's not cheap, and things like 2FA are so far down the list you can't see them. Again I think we agree, I just think a lot of people think the party controls campaigns and that's largely not the case, and even when it is there are arguably more urgent issues (campaign finance law training, ex) that could benefit from any kind of standardization.
  - dillondoyle 8y ago
    Do you work in politics? My experience working with these orgs is you're either on the approved vendor list or your not getting competitive clients
    - realitygrill 8y ago
      Would you be willing to chat about approved vendors? I can't find your email, but here's mine: derrick@amass.ai My team did some work for the KS04 special election last year, and now we've developed a service for political campaigns. But traction.. maybe we're getting screwed by this approved vendors thing.

idlewords 8y ago

Campaigns I have worked with are generally eager for this kind of training and would gladly accept it if it were offered. They are aware of the hacking threat and feel out of their depth. I think a good starting point is to simply offer in-person training at key points in the campaign (on filing, after a primary win, and before the general election).

camgunz 8y ago
Super agree, this would be fantastic. I'm sure there are people at the DNC and elsewhere who would happy to advocate for the (very small amount of) funding it would take -- as you wrote it should be a top priority.

dillondoyle 8y ago

The main DSCC and DCCC can and will force campaigns to use approved vendors and they could very easily enforce google apps. This only works where they provide $ or staff though as leverage. But generally I think carrot works better than stick

camgunz 8y ago
Kind of and in some cases sure (most obvious is union printing), but if a campaign says "no", really all the DCCC can do is threaten to pull resources (which they wouldn't for a competitive campaign). Really this happens more as advice and political pressure. But also consider downticket races like secretary of state or state ag. Then you're talking state parties who have almost no power at all. So yeah I think carrot is definitely better than stick, but there basically is no stick. I do think the DCCC should set up gapps for every general campaign and provide it for free, and should probably also offer it to professional Democrats, also for free, but this is a larger tech infrastructure question that starts to include organizing tech, website tech, VAN, email tech, etc. I personally think we should provide all those things, but there are a lot of (vendor, of course) politics involved, it's not cheap, and things like 2FA are so far down the list you can't see them. Again I think we agree, I just think a lot of people think the party controls campaigns and that's largely not the case, and even when it is there are arguably more urgent issues (campaign finance law training, ex) that could benefit from any kind of standardization.
- dillondoyle 8y ago
  Do you work in politics? My experience working with these orgs is you're either on the approved vendor list or your not getting competitive clients
  - realitygrill 8y ago
    Would you be willing to chat about approved vendors? I can't find your email, but here's mine: derrick@amass.ai My team did some work for the KS04 special election last year, and now we've developed a service for political campaigns. But traction.. maybe we're getting screwed by this approved vendors thing.