Start: I contacted Mary Ruwart while at the New Hampshire event. We had long discussion of a whole series of issues. One of these was the list of membership data that is supposed to be sent regularly from the national party to the state party. Massachusetts had at that time not been receiving the list on a regular basis, a situation that has since changed.

Mary Ruwart promised that she would contact the National Party, and she did. She received a response from Robert Kraus. Unfortunately, many of Mr. Kraus's statements to her are not what one would expect, given the facts. The following gives (1) her memo, (2) Mr. Kraus's response, and (3) My remarks on Mr. Kraus's statements. As a matter of courtesy, I first supply his response without comments, and then supply the memo with interpolated observations. Note that this has all gone to the entire LNC at this point, so it is in no sense a private discussion any more.

Mary Ruwart's Memo, as cced to the entire LNC and various party employees.

From: Mary Ruwart [mailto:mary@ruwart.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 11:49 AM
To: 'Robert Kraus'
Cc: lnc-discuss@hq.lp.org
Subject: Service to affiliates

Dr. George Phillies approached me in NH with concerns about how information about new LP members is conveyed to affiliates. He claims that such information is provided to affiliates on an irregular basis every few months or so, rather than monthly as it has been in the past.

He also indicated that there seems to be no mechanism in place to update e-mail addresses of members. Consequently, when the old e-mail address no longer works, members simply stop getting e-mails.

Can you enlighten me on these items so that I can address his concerns? Thanks!
----end of Ruwart email---

Robert Kraus's response to Mary Ruwart's Memo, as cced to the entire LNC and various party employees. I've marked points where there are issues:

From: Robert Kraus [mailto:robert.kraus@lp.org]
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 11:19 AM
To: 'Mary Ruwart'
Cc: lnc-discuss@hq.lp.org
Subject: RE: Service to affiliates

Sure,

As his own state chair can tell you (and yours BTW - Pat) - each state chair or [#1UNTRUE] their designated person receives a copy of all inquiries made via the web. In addition, as we explained at the state chairs conference, they receive this in their data dumps. They simply have to look at the Bio Date Added column to determine all their new inquires and Membership date added for new members.

When George was Chair for MA, his designated person was Carol McMahon. [#2 UNTRUE]. I do not recall Carol ever complaining about not receiving dumps or inquires. When Carol moved to CT, she had me change the designated person to David Blau who is now Chair. [#3 UNTRUE.] During George's tenure as Chair, I did not receive one update from LPMA. [#4 UNTRUE] David has already sent me a few and promises to do a better job of following up with new inquires (who he says the LPMA was lax in following up for the last couple years). [#5 BLAU DENIES SAYING THIS.]

I do get regular updates from many states, especially VA which does so almost weekly, which includes updates to emails. We have done email appends in the past on very rare occasions on limited records, as these cost about 25 cents per record. The annual report does request updates to the constituents' info including emails. Susan and Casey also get multiple updates from constituents which they input daily.

Donny says we have about 61,000 emails on file for our email blasts and our delivery rate is 98% (thus only about 2% bounce back - bad or blocked). I believe if an email bounces back more than 5 times or so, it gets automatically removed. We get about 3000 new or changed emails per month which we upload to our email server periodically. [#6 SEE DISCUSSION IN #4, BLOCK A.]

Dumps are sent out at least once a month [#7 CONTRADICTS OUR FALL/WINTER EXPERIENCE] and additionally by request. I do not recall ever refusing to send out an extra dump or two when asked.

As you recall, we had a short period this summer when doing the web change over, where inquires were not going out. During that time I sent out dumps every other week to make sure states where kept up to date.

Thanks for your question!
Robert
Robert S. Kraus - Dir of Operations
Operations@LP.org
Libertarian National Committee