The Rundown: What is Causeway Solutions?
Back in March, Politico reported that in recent years, at least eight states had suggested bans on posting voter records publicly, but enabling them to be available on request. So far a few of those states have signed those bans into law. But despite data privacy being an increasingly national concern, legal challenges from conservative groups are overturning those laws. As a result, every voter’s records are being posted online, including details such as their names, addresses and birth dates.
Zach Edwards, senior threat analyst at Silent Push said he believes Congress needs to find a way to pass a federal law that amends The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The NVRA mandates that states must maintain accurate and current voter registration lists. Similarly, voters aren’t removed from those lists without a proper reason, such as death or moving out of the state.
“We need to find a healthy balance between voter transparency laws that empower organizations to monitor voter files for potential problems, while also carving out protections for people who don’t want marketing messages targeted based on voter data,” he explained. “Companies should not be able to generate a nationwide list of U.S. voters and sell it or share it haphazardly to other for-profit companies, without some control for the people whose voter data is being shared.”
Causeway’s website does state that its data analytics platform is HITRUST certified, meaning the business maintains the “highest standards for collecting, managing and safeguarding consumer data.” Typically, HITRUST certification addresses security privacy and regulatory challenges across various industries.
What is Causeway’s relationship with X?
The connection began earlier this year when one of Causeway’s partners gave a presentation in Washington, D.C. The focus was on where voters and consumers are getting their ad-based information. That event was also attended by some of the X leadership. One of the figures in that presentation highlighted X users, which got the X attendees excited because it reflected their own internal data, so they felt validated.
So are these numbers accurate?
They are and they aren’t.
They are, because the numbers came from the U.S. registered voter file which is publicly available from the Secretary of State’s office, and Causeway’s subscribers. Thinking about how that data is used, all of Causeway’s audiences are available in the public data marketplace on LiveRamp, The Trade Desk, and other digital platforms. That data is obfuscated and available for purchase.
The gray area is that these aren’t definitive. The numbers aren’t a complete analysis of X’s full user base. Nor do they differentiate between bots and humans, or active and idle users. Simply because the data didn’t come from X.
It’s just predictive modeling. There was no data collection without the consent of users whatsoever. Just some predictive models applied to publicly available data.
So if we look at those figures again: 37 million Democrats, 32 million Republicans and a further 34 million undecided voters — these aren’t definite. Causeway’s work would say that sure, there are “likely” to be 37 million Democrats, there are also “likely” to be 32 million Republicans, and a further 34 million users are “likely” to be undecided.
Are these numbers actually useful to X or advertisers?
For X, absolutely. They provided the platform with another attempt to dispel more headlines and try to portray that the platform is more diverse than the average user would probably think. Albeit, by not caveating that these are “likely” figures, it’s already thrown up another host of unanswered questions around the legitimacy of X’s actual user base and if X’s team can ever be trusted since going private, that X probably didn’t need.
