Is There A Way To Find Out If Someone Is Register Democrat Or Republican?

Did Yous Vote? At present Your Friends May Know (and Nag You)

OutVote and VoteWithMe, two new political apps, show you the voting histories of your friends and family. Then the apps ask you to send messages urging them to go vote on Tuesday.

Nov. 4, 2018

My dentist, a registered Republican, did not vote in the last midterm elections, in 2014.

But the possessor of my local bookstore, a registered Democrat, did vote and so. So did my accountant, who is not registered with either political party.

I know these details not because the dentist, the bookseller and the accountant volunteered to share their voting histories with me. I found out from VoteWithMe and OutVote, two new political apps that are trying to use peer pressure to become people to vote Tuesday.

The apps are to elections what Zillow is to existent estate — services that pull public information from government records, repackage it for consumer viewing and make it available at the touch on of a smartphone button. Merely instead of giving you a peek at firm prices, VoteWithMe and OutVote let you snoop on which of your friends voted in past elections and their party affiliations — and so prod them to become to the polls by sending them scripted messages like "You gonna vote?"

"I don't want this to come off like we're shaming our friends into voting," said Naseem Makiya, the principal executive of OutVote, a beginning-upwards in Boston. But, he said, "I think a lot of people might vote just because they're frankly worried that their friends will find out if they didn't."

[Read our guide on how, when and where to vote on Tuesday .]

Whom Americans vote for is private. But other information in their state voter files is public data; depending on the country, it tin can include details similar their name, address, phone number and party affiliation and when they voted. The apps try to match the people in a smartphone'southward contacts to their voter files, then display some of those details.

The data's increasing availability may surprise people receiving messages nudging them to vote — or even trouble them, past exposing personal politics they might have preferred to go on to themselves. Political campaigns have for years purchased voter files from states or bought national voter databases from data brokers, but the information has otherwise had little public exposure exterior of entrada use. Now whatever app user can hands harness such data to make inferences virtually, and try to influence, their contacts' voting behavior.

"You want to use that gentle social force per unit area around voting," said Amanda Coulombe, general managing director of organizing at NGP VAN, a campaign engineering company for Democrats, "but really making sure you are balancing that with not freaking people out."

The apps could as well have unintended consequences, said Ira Rubinstein, a senior swain at the Information Law Institute at New York University Schoolhouse of Police who studies voter privacy.

For one affair, he said, people could use the apps to create contact lists of acquaintances, strangers or public figures they exercise non like and maliciously publicize their voting histories. As a hypothetical example, he said, religious leaders might be outed for registering with a political party whose platform runs counter to their institution'southward doctrine.

"I don't think there are whatsoever particular safeguards to prevent people from just assembling a contact list for more than malicious purposes, acquiring this information and using information technology to harass or coerce people," Mr. Rubinstein said.

The apps' developers say they are merely democratizing access to these public records.

The apps are free for consumers to use. But OutVote, which received seed funding last summer from Y Combinator, a well-known start-upwardly accelerator, as well works with political candidates and groups that pay fees to use the app as part of their campaigns. VoteWithMe was adult by the New Data Project, a nonprofit founded by Obama administration appointees.

Anyone can use the apps, just executives say they hope to ameliorate voter turnout peculiarly amidst immature Democrats. The VoteWithMe app, for instance, is preset to show likely Democrats amidst a user'south contacts. Users must change the app's settings to see the voting histories of all of their contacts. Some Republican political apps also enable consumers to send scripted letters, but practice not evidence their contacts' voting history.

Political scientific discipline inquiry has shown that people plough out to vote in higher numbers when they recall their family and neighbors are observing their civic behavior. The VoteWithMe and OutVote apps just automate that surveillance and social pressure level.

"The bulletin is going to exist coming from someone that not just knows who you are but knows that yous didn't vote last fourth dimension," said Mikey Dickerson, the executive managing director of the New Data Project, who served every bit chief of the United States Digital Service under President Barack Obama. "We are trying to engineer a situation where there is a social expectation that they do vote."

Lily Jampol, a diversity and inclusion consultant in San Francisco, downloaded the VoteWithMe app last Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, she said, she had sent dozens of text messages to people in her contacts.

"I've been optimizing, trying to wrangle for people who I think will be nearly affected," said Ms. Jampol, a behavioral scientist.

The apps as well distinguish engaged voters from wayward ones.

If someone in your contacts list has a perfect voting record, OutVote identifies him or her every bit a "super voter" and displays an emoji of a smiley face with ruby hearts for optics next to the name. For those "woke friends who vote," it suggests sending a message saying: "I know you're gonna vote on November half dozen DUH, but brand sure to remind your friends also!"

Both apps display election years that people have skipped with a big red slash next to their names. OutVote marks voters who missed elections with a sad-faced emoji dripping a tear.

To test the apps, reporters at The New York Times created a mock contact list of politicians and celebrities with their names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and workplaces and other data about them. The results suggest how like shooting fish in a barrel information technology tin be to use the information to pry into someone's personal life.

Among other things, the apps indicated that Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who recently led hearings on consumer privacy, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, each faithfully voted in every full general, primary and municipal election dating dorsum to 2004.

They also reported that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat running for the Firm, did non vote in the final midterm elections in 2014. Nor did Alyssa Milano, an actress and activist who recently posted a video on Twitter urging her followers to vote.

A spokesman for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that she was purged from the New York voter rolls in 2016 and that he was looking into 2014. Ms. Milano said, in a message sent via her publicist, that she was dealing at the time with severe postpartum low after the premature birth of her girl.

By inspecting information that the apps harvested from our contacts, The Times also establish that they took more personal data than required to lucifer voters — such equally the workplace and email address of Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican.

After queries from The Times, VoteWithMe and OutVote each said they had eliminated some types of information that their apps were harvesting. In subsequent testing final week, The Times found that VoteWithMe no longer collected e-mail addresses, street names and numbers, or company names. Merely OutVote continued to do then. Mr. Makiya of OutVote said the app had stopped collecting social contour data but needed the email addresses to friction match voter files.

For the midterm elections, OutVote is too working with Vote.org, a nonprofit organization that tries to increment voter participation, on a nonpartisan app.

That app allows users to send messages asking contacts to vote — without displaying those contacts' voting histories. It besides collects data on users' contacts and matches them to voter files to aid Vote.org rails whether people who received messages were more likely to vote than people who did not.

Debra Cleaver, chief executive of Vote.org, said the app was part of an experiment to determine the efficacy of such digital social pressure tools. It might turn out, she said, that it takes messages from several friends to get someone to vote.

The app's news release, however, did not disembalm that users would be part of an experiment, nor did the descriptions of Vote.org'southward app in the Google Play and Apple app stores. A Vote.org spokeswoman said the app's privacy policy informed users that the group may use their data to measure the effectiveness of its programs.

"No ane really knows whether peer-to-peer technology has been successful this year," Ms. Cleaver said. "I think we should exist charily optimistic but realistic."