ANN ARBOR ? Rick Snyder, who has run a lot of technology companies in the past couple of decades, has been using technology extensively for the past year to land his spot opposite Democrat Virg Bernero in the race to become the next governor of Michigan.
Snyder, a Republican, is the former CEO and COO of Gateway, a personal computer maker sold to Acer in 2007. He also is a long-time venture capitalist funding a host of technology startups, including his most recent stint as chairman of HandyLab, an Ann Arbor medical device company sold last year for $275 million.
First winning the straw poll at the Mackinac Summit in September 2009, and then the Republican primary in August, Snyder used a secret technology weapon ? the Rick Innovation Network. Through this technology, Snyder?s army of volunteers helped get out the vote on Mackinac Island, and then across the state. His team plans to use the same technology to win the general election on Nov. 2.
?I think it is the path of the future,? Snyder said. ?It?s making things much more efficient to connect with concerned voters. We want to get more people connected to the political process and get them to vote.?
The man behind the curtain running the Rick Innovation Network is Kal Malhas, the campaign?s director of New Media and Communication. Malhas came out of IBM?s automotive business and volunteered to help Snyder get elected governor.
?RIN uses our online phone bank and letters to the editor and also imports names and addresses from our social network,? Malhas said. ?We invite potential voters to fundraisers or to support Rick. The more they interact with RIC, the more they accumulate loyalty points for promotional considerations as well. We call it one leg of the stool.?
The technology also uses a ?walking edge application? that downloads data into smart phones, like Blackberries and iPhones. When volunteers walk the neighborhoods to get out the vote, the application generates customized lists of, say, a senior citizen volunteer for Rick could just get physical addresses for other senior citizens who are much more likely to open the door to a peer.
Malhas honed the voter mobilization application at the Republican Mackinac Conference.
?The primary objective was to make sure we had complete supporter engagement. We attended as many events as possible. We used a two d-bar code system and had each volunteer take a picture of the code with their smart phones to prove they attended. We posted a leader board that showed the people who attended the most engagements to win promotions that included campaign merchandise. We?ll use the same tools in the general election, but we may use them a little differently. We?ll use the walking edge application much more extensively, but won?t use it to reward volunteers.?
Malhas said the only less than positive feedback is not all volunteers own smart phones. So for those who don?t own smart phones, the campaign will supply them with the traditional paper voter walk list.?
He said the first use of this technology was in Scott Brown?s US Senate campaign in Massachusetts. Brown won the seat held for the previous half century by Democrat Ted Kennedy.
?If you don?t believe public campaigns can be won or lost on technology alone, I have two words for you, Scott Brown. We could in fact win on technology alone. Going forward it will be integral for public elections to treat new media as with equal importance in terms of budgeting and focus.?
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