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Sanders Suspended From DNC Voter Data After Breach of Clinton Files
Friday, December 18, 2015 06:36 AM
By: Newsmax Wires
Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign has been suspended from accessing crucial Democratic National Committee voter data after its national data director improperly accessed proprietary data from Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The staffer, Josh Uretsky, was fired by the campaign for viewing data that the Clinton campaign had added to its own files during a temporary glitch in the voter database managed by outside vendor NGP VAN, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The Sanders campaign confirmed late Thursday that it had fired a staffer who had accessed modeling data from the Clinton campaign.
"That behavior is unacceptable and that staffer was immediately fired," communications director Michael Briggs said in a statement.
Briggs responded to a question about Uretsky by sharing that statement with Bloomberg a second time.
The fallout from the breach, first reported by The Washington Post, is a blow to the Sanders campaign, which is barred from using the crucial data just as the Iowa caucus approaches on Feb. 1. Access won't be restored until an investigation is completed, the DNC said.
Though the Sanders team has fired a top data staffer, Briggs pointed blame at problems with the vendor's system. "Sadly, the vendor who runs the DNC's voter file program continues to make serious errors," he said, noting the campaign had alerted the DNC to problems months ago.
CEO Stu Trevelyan of NGP VAN described the event as an “isolated incident," saying "we have introduced additional safeguards to ensure that this issue will not recur."
