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Election analysts who surmise that voter suppression tactics against Bernie Sanders must have been assisted by voter database hacks are wondering at the timing and senselessness of the murder of a DNC data director, Seth Rich. Rich was shot multiple times in the back in a puzzling random murder in an affluent area of Washington DC. Nothing was taken from him, and the case has been called a botched robbery by police. Rich was from Nebraska.

When hundreds of thousands of voters were dropped from the rolls, or found their party registrations changed without their permission, in the Democratic primaries in New York, Arizona, and California, one question lingered: How did the fiascos come to affect almost exclusively Bernie Sanders supporters?



It has emerged that the NGP VAN database, a tool used by almost every Democratic political campaign and which certainly was used by Sanders, included information such as to whom a voter has donated, and other highly specific references to candidates. Arizona election integrity activist John Brakey, co-founder of AUDIT-AZ, "Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections," said in an email:

"They know if you like anchovies or not. What magazines you're reading and more."

Brakey said the NGP VAN would certainly contain information which could be used to target likely Sanders voters in voting list purges.



The VAN has already been the subject of controversy. A pre-primary tiff erupted between the Clinton campaign and the Sanders campaign when Sanders workers peeked at Clinton data, after the software' company, which is on contract with the DNC, dropped a firewall between campaigns. In retaliation, the Clinton camp had the Sanders campaign cut off from the software for days. The news coverage prompted by the data breach underscored the importance of NGP VAN in the Democratic campaign world, what the company's CEO Stu Trevelyan has called the "Democratic data nerve center."