How a data-backed Christian nationalist machine helped Trump to power

How a data-backed Christian nationalist machine helped Trump to power
With help from a vast evangelical network and data on almost the entire US voting population, the Christian right may have found the boost it needed
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/03/bill-dallas-christian-nationalist-right-donald-trump?

By his own account, Bill Dallas grew up in an unhappy household. His mother had been sexually abused by her father and had her first pregnancy aged 17. Dallas’s dad was an alcoholic and a depressive who died at 51. Dallas was an intense, obsessive child, dogged by feelings of inadequacy. You could say he was wired for the bitter schema of sin-and-salvation religion.

But despite his challenging start in life, he had clear talents. He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, known for its vast academic offerings. He dreamed of becoming an actor and after graduating with honors, he moved to San Francisco. Blessed with photogenic looks, he modeled for “a major retail chain”. Soon Dallas was at the center of an energetic social whirl. He and his friends rented stretch limos and people gave him the nickname “Mr GQ”. Soon his connections started to yield fruit – and temptation. Dallas found his way into real estate and then the money began to pour in. But even as he accumulated outward signs of success, Dallas couldn’t shake the anxieties at his core. Then, things really fell apart.

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In December 2015, Chris Vickery, an information technology specialist who hunted for data breaches as a hobby, came upon a massive database on 191 million US citizens. It contained data belonging to registered voters, from cellphone numbers to evidence of gun ownership. A second breach contained even more detailed information – including income levels, whether the person was a fan of Nascar, had a “Bible lifestyle”, or had an interest in hunting or fishing.

After some sleuthing, Vickery thought he had a clear idea of where it all came from. It linked, he said, to Pioneer Solutions Incorporated, a company run by Bill Dallas. It also linked to a campaign titled “Champion the Vote”, run by UiP.

What we do is we track to see what’s going to make somebody vote either one way or not vote at all.

But the real significance of Vickery’s discovery was the number of voters UiP had access to information on.

“We have about 200 million files, so we have pretty much the whole voting population in our database,” said Dallas. “What we do is we track to see what’s going to make somebody vote either one way or not vote at all.”

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