Civicist

CIVIC TECH NEWS & ANALYSIS

BUTTON-PRESSING

Clinton promises data-driven campaign going forward; Politwoops is back; and more.

  • Tech and the presidentials: After swiftly conceding to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire last night, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook sent a memo to reporters promising “a data-driven approach to maximizing delegates” going forward and urging them not to make too much of the next two primaries compared to the delegate-rich votes in March. It reads, in part:

    The way to win the nomination is to maximize the number of delegates we secure from each primary and caucus. That means, in many cases, that the margin of victory (or defeat) within a given state is actually more important than whether the state is won or lost. Thus, the campaign is building the type of modern, data-driven operation that it will take to turn voters out and win the most possible delegates.

    The memo goes on to promise that each congressional district “will have its own data-driven plan.”The memo uses the word “data-driven” four times overall.

  • Upon winning the primary, Bernie Sanders made a live call for donations during his televised victory speech, which ActBlue’s Erin Hill tells First Post led to “incoming traffic at historic levels.” Some donors did experience a “still processing” message that appeared to hang, but Hill says, “In big moments, we prioritize incoming contributions first, sending receipts and updating metrics later. That’s by design and that worked by design last night. …Everything processed. There was a snafu with our thanks page UI, however, that caused donors to not get to the thanks page & leave some uncertainty about whether those contributions were completed. That was not by design and something we got fixed within an hour. But obviously not the experience we want donors to ever have, which is why we were also busy with concurrent real time customer service last night.” (She’s too modest to say that she was still up at 4 am doing some of that customer service.)

  • Hillary Clinton knows what selfies are, but according to this report from Amy Chozick of the New York Times, she’s not sure what it means for something to “go viral.”

  • As a fan of puns and culture hacks, here’s a robo-call out to Aaron Black of Americans United for Change, who jumped on Marco Rubio’s robotic performance during last week’s GOP debate and started following the candidate around dressed in a silver robot costume and holding a #RobotRubio sign. After some Rubio supporters roughed him up, an incident that was captured on video, Black spoke to Politico’s Nick Gass, saying, “You know, I don’t know what their major malfunction was, but I must have seriously pressed their buttons.”

  • Trump watch: Vox’s Ezra Klein has a must-read reminder on why Trump’s continuing rise is “terrifying.”

  • This is civic tech: West Carrolton, Ohio, is the first city to power its website with ProudCity’s beta product, reports Dustin Hailer for GovTech.com.

  • The Sunlight Foundation’s Politwoops site is back online, after being shut down by Twitter. The revived tool will now include every deleted tweet made by elected officials and candidates for office, and there are plans to expand to executive branch officials and state legislators. Already it has caught deleted tweets from Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Chris Christie.

  • Congrats to Civic Hall member David Moore, who demoed NYC Councilmatic at the NY Tech Meetup last night, his first time on that stage.

  • Life in Facebookistan: Longtime tech industry observer Om Malik explains why he has always been critical of Facebook’s so-called “Internet.org” or “Free Basics” project. “I am suspicious of any for-profit company arguing its good intentions and its free gifts.”

  • Outspoken VC Marc Andreessen takes the opposite and ahistorical view, tweeting, “Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?” As Kurt Wagner reports for Re/Code, the backlash was swift and fierce and ultimately the chastened Andreessen tweeted a full apology.