Modeling Journey

The LPC lags behind the Tories, Republicans, Democrats, and UK Tories because it does not have a centralized voter database. This means it does not have a national "machine" which can be used to encourage individuals to donate to the party so that it can fight election campaigns. This means it is not as sophisticated as Harper's "new" Tories, and years behind the state of the art Republicans' with their Voter Vault, and Democrats, with their Demzilla.

Wikipedia, in their Voter Database entry, say this: "In Canada, the Conservative Party of Canada uses the Constituent Information Management System (CIMS), originally developed by the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, to manage voter information. It is similar to the American systems. The New Democratic Party uses their own some simpler system known as NDPVote. The Liberal Party has no centralized system, with different ridings using various systems."

Why is this important? Think about this statement about the Republican Voter Vault (in The Telegraph 12/03/2005): "It could define, across America, those people who hadn't yet realised they were Republicans, and convince them to vote."

Karl Rove gave the UK Tories access to the Voter Vault program, and one of them said this: "The software can reveal new parts of society that the party has not targeted before, but who could be persuaded to vote Tory," [Dr. Fox] says. "It means we can out-gun Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the ground."

Imagine if Liberal canvassers in the next few elections could use hand-held computers to record information on voters when they visited them or spoke to them via phones? The data would be inputed into the Libzilla system for future use. Republicans have found that magazine subscriptions give a pretty good idea of who is Republican (if you read National Review) or Democrat (reads Mother Jones). Your choice of car is an indicaiton (hybrid, anyone?)

This information is used to get out the vote (GOTV), ask for donations, energize volunteer base, check views on issues via surveys.

The Democrats developed Demzilla because they had to rely on small-dollar donors due to changes in the laws (sound familiar?).

Republicans have inserted their view of electoral priorities into Cabinet agencies (farm aid programs for specific regions in a state, to bolster votes there). Government funds tailored to work for re-election of one party.

Isn't it time for the LPC to start its own Libzilla?