Running a council race digitally Running a council race digitally (July 02, 2003)

Resident's program helps candidates fine-tune messages

by Bill D'Agostino

A new online computer program is helping candidates running for local political offices refine their messages, and the Palo Altan who created it hopes to eventually change the way races are run statewide.

Inside the database of Joe Villareal's program, known as JustVoters, is the public information for all registered Palo Alto voters. Name, gender, address, birthplace, age, political party and -- perhaps most importantly -- voting habits are available using a Google-like search engine for any candidates willing to pay $175 a month.

With a few clicks of the mouse, information about groups of voters are easily available for viewing, printing and sorting.

For instance, it takes but a moment to find out that although there are 36,348 registered voters in Palo Alto, only 12,665 voted during the last council election, in November of 2001. Of those, 6,873 are female, 5,714 are 55 years old or over, 7,304 are registered Democrats and 3,239 were born in California. But only 530 who voted last time are under 35-years-old, only 217 are registered with the Green Party, and only 215 were born in Texas.

Armed with similar information -- and without the use of expensive campaign consultants -- JustVoters allows candidates to mold their message to the specific constituents they want to reach, and not waste time trying to communicate to residents who usually don't vote or wouldn't be interested in their current pitch.

"A campaign is not a time to proselytize," Villareal said, pointing out that most campaigns are a fight for the undecided voters.

Using the program, Harold "Skip" Justman, a City Council candidate, targeted local seniors who voted in nearly all of the last seven citywide elections, and sent out 3,000 postcards with a photograph of him with his mother. Future postcards will be tailored to voters with school-aged children.

"It's another example of how computers have enabled us to fine-tune out activities," Justman said of the program.

A disciple of the open source code movement -- where programmers give access to their code and allow other programmers to modify and improve it -- Villareal is the president of Ondas Election Services, and a frequent civic volunteer.

So far, all of the announced candidates for City Council have showed interest in JustVoters. "Tongue in cheek, I would say nobody else should use it," said Vice Mayor Bern Beecham, the first candidate to sign on to the program.

The program also allows candidates to create their own databases, and Villareal suggests using it while networking with friends and other supporters.

Although Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill liked to say "All politics is local," Villareal argues a more specific point. "It's actually personal."

E-mail Bill D'Agostino at bdagostino@paweekly.com