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Democrats unveil comprehensive voter turnout projectDNC chairman: 2002 election a 'wake-up call'
From John Mercurio
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Calling the 2002 election a "wake-up call" for his party, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe on Thursday unveiled a comprehensive voter-turnout project designed to help Democrats overcome a well-organized GOP political operation and win back the White House in 2004. The project is known as "5104," which denotes the DNC's goal of winning 51 percent of the national vote in 2004. Its centerpiece is a comprehensive database that features economic, demographic and consumer data on about 158 million voters nationwide. The computer program also includes technological features that party officials can use to categorize voters to raise money and target mailings, among other things. McAuliffe said the DNC donor list in 2000 was extremely weak. "Something was fundamentally flawed when 50 million people voted for Al Gore and we only had 400,000 donors on our list," he said. The DNC spent $1.4 million in 2002 for state voter files, including state databases for voters and donors. Since then, officials have fixed 27 million incorrect addresses and phone numbers, and removed 340,000 dead voters. McAuliffe said this will result in a one-time savings of $15 million in mailing costs alone for state party committees and the DNC. Speaking to reporters as the DNC opened its annual winter meeting in Washington, McAuliffe outlined three basic reasons that Democrats scored such a decisive drubbing last fall: • a fund-raising deficit; • lower-than-expected voter turnout; • failure to deliver a Democratic message that distinguished them from President Bush and GOP candidates. Under campaign-finance reform legislation passed last year, Democrats now face a severe shortfall in so-called hard money or small-dollar donations. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, which went into effect in November, has outlawed so-called "soft money" -- the unlimited and unregulated contributions from labor unions, corporations, and wealthy individuals. Parties will now have to rely on regulated "hard money," which has proven more difficult for Democrats to raise. McAuliffe said the DNC will launch a more aggressive direct-mail project, aided by a 70 percent increase in their donor list. "We need to replace that soft money with hard money," he said. "It's the challenge we face every day." Democrats will hone their message in 2004 by focusing more aggressively on "niche" messaging, similar to the Confederate flag issue Republicans successfully used in Georgia last year against then-Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat. For their part, Republicans say they don't plan to let Democrats catch up to their 2002 operations. During its winter meeting earlier this month in Washington, the Republican National Committee detailed its plans to expand its "72-hour project" for voter turnout in 2004.
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