“We don’t need thousands of people; we need dozens,” Mr. Barkett said. “We could do a lot of damage with 30 people. A lot. But they’ve got to be real engineers.” Of Mr. Ginn, he said: “Aaron gets that.”
Mr. Barkett added: “We get 20 or 30 of those people and, watch out. The Democrats will have a hard time keeping up with that.”
But attracting even that many has proved elusive, even as Democratic groups have developed a deep talent bench. Catalist, a liberal data and analytics cooperative founded in 2006 — and the acknowledged model for Data Trust — has a thousand clients and a core staff of about 50. The Democratic National Committee and Democratic state parties already have a standardized system for sharing voter information, while a generation of liberal and Democratic activists has come up through the ranks using a single data platform.
The Republican National Committee effort is also playing catch-up among allies on the right. The political and philanthropic network overseen by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialists, has financed a separate voter data initiative, known as Themis, which has been up and running for more than four years, and, with its sister company i360, employs about 50 people.
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