• Republican Party of Virginia: 2 Absentee Ballot Applications; 1 generic “Vote Republican”
• Fimian for Congress (Republican): 2 mailings: combined anti-Connolly and pro-Fimian
• Obama for America: one legal sized postcard
• Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: 15 negative ads about Fimian
• Democratic Party of Virginia: 11 mixed ads, inside page usually split 2/3 vs. 1/3 with “info” about each candidate.

It is very surprising that I didn’t receive even more mail. For the 2007 election cycle, I received more than twice as much junk mail from the candidates and their parties than I did this time. But the mailings for this cycle were of much larger and heavier stock paper than a year ago. If the campaigns had used “normal” postcards or envelopes, they could have done even more mailings. Luckily, I think (hope, pray) that they have wised up: People are sick of political mail and are throwing it away without looking at it. So they make it more obnoxious by making it larger.

The Internet was better represented in these mailings:

• The Democratic Party of Virginia included the Obama web site URL and their own anti-McCain web site URL in 13 of the 15 mailings.
• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee only referred people to their anti-Fimian web site URL.
• The Republican Party of Virginia, Fimian for Congress, and Obama for America gave their own web site URL.

The other interesting thing I noticed is the shift on the addressing of the mailings. The mailings received early in the race were generally addressed to “The Clark Household.” The mailings received nearer to the election were generally addressed to my wife. I received no mailings addressed to me by name. There were also quite a few mailings addressed to “Current Resident” which is an insult. We know you’ve got the names, you’ve bought the registrar lists from the county, why waste money sending mail to “Current Resident?” And yes, I still wish I could opt-out of allowing the county to sell my name and information.

(Update: I forgot to link to this letter to the editor of the local paper concerning the political junk mail of the season.)

I guess we’ll find out if Comcast really is reading blogs.

During the 2007 election cycle, which included the Virginia state Senate, Delegate, and local offices, I collected all the political junk mail that was sent to my home. I’ve finally gone through it all (80 pieces of mail) to present this summary:

There were five items I received that were not authorized by a candidate:

• For Jay O’Brien, a postcard by the Family Foundation Action
• For Republicans, a sample ballot, by the Republican Party of Virginia
• A notice for the County Board of Supervisor’s vote on illegal immigration, by Corey Stewart, paid for with my tax dollars. Interesting reading at Corey Stewart Under Investigation. Potomac News articles:
  • Legality of Stewart mailer questioned (Oct. 12, 2007)
  • Attorney clears Stewart over mailer (Nov. 3, 2007)
• For Faisal Gill, a letter from Rep. Tom Davis
• For and From the Republican National Committee, a fundraiser masquerading as a survey (I’ll write more about this item in a separate post later this week)

Jay O’Brien’s campaign sent out two items that are noteworthy. One was a letter from his wife, Sevea O’Brien. It came in a light yellow envelope with a return address of PO Box 5, Clifton, VA 20124. There should be a law that all campaign mailings have the “Authorized By” statement on the outside of the envelope. Keeping the disclosure hidden inside the envelope is deceptive. See Good Move or Campaign Tactic Overload? for more on this letter.

The other odd mailing for the O’Brien campaign was a postcard from Waja Grimm, of Turkey Run Court. Who in the world is Waja Grimm? Where is Turkey Run Court? It sounds like an insult of a judicial system. An internet seach shows she is a member of the governing board of Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy. I also found her complete street address online, which actually is a street called “Turkey Run Court” in Manassas. I wonder why she didn’t include the complete address in her mailing? Was she worried about her privacy? If so, she should either get a PO Box, or not endorse candidates. Is there a rule that campaign mailings must include a complete return address? If not, there should be.

I wonder why the candidates and campaigns don’t make better use of the web. Only one of the candidates for state-level office included their campaign’s web site URL in their mailings, and he only included it one time in the twenty mailings I received. The candidates and parties spent thousands of dollars on these campaigns, but then don’t include one line of text about how the voters can get more information about the candidate? That is a bizarre waste of money.

The candidate web sites could be found at:

• Paul Nichols
• Faisal Gill (The domain registration expired on December 4, 2007. I assume this means that Mr. Gill is giving up on future plans to run for public office.)
• George Barker
• Jay O’Brien

So, election 2007 is over. And only 329 days to go until the Presidential and Congressional (House and a Senator for me) elections. Oh boy. I can’t wait to see how much junk mail comes in over the next year for those.

So I visited Vistaprint, and tried to log into my account, the one that was closed. I spent a good amount of time with a Vistaprint customer service representative back in April, and told him to close my account. Well that really worked. I guess I now need to worry about my address getting further sold. The privacy policy for the motivational speakers says they will market the information they collect. I now get to file a Form 1500 on them.

I’ve now emailed Vistaprint and submitted my request that they close my account. Tomorrow I’ll be mailing them the request. Of course, at this point, I doubt they will really do anything.

If you prefer not to receive future promotional mailings of this type from Microsoft, please send this mailing back to the sender with the following text visible to the recipient: “return to sender” and “unsubscribe me from your list.” We will promptly update your contact preferences; however, please be aware you may still receive previously initiated promotional communications.

The sender? That would be “Microsoft adCenter.” The nice letter was signed by a Corporate Vice President, Joanne Bradford, should I mail my note to her?

Why can’t they simply set up a web page somewhere at microsoft.com to allow me to opt-out? There is already a unique code on the inside of the mailing, which is also on my address label printed on the envelope. I’m so sure that MS has a staff of people waiting to go through dozens of opt-out requests. Or they could hire one programmer (I’m sure they have some out there somewhere that aren’t busy screwing up Vista and Office 200x) to spend a couple days to integrate their address label system with an opt-out system.

They also helpfuly tell you to opt-out with the Direct Marketing Association to help reduce your junk mail. Why don’t they do everyone a favor and simply respect people’s privacy and NOT SHARE SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION? My opinion of MacWorld has gone down slightly, although my opinion is slightly helped by them providing opt-out information fairly easily.

I also emailed one of these companies to get their address. Their web host is so screwed up, their email bounced with relay errors. you have got to love junk mailers, they are so close to the competence levels of spammers. Maybe a junk mailer bred with another junk mailer to give us spammers?

The Post Office though will give me the mailing address of the Bulk Permit owner. But it will cost me $4.40. Let me get this straight: First I have to get this garbage in my mailbox. Then I have to pay the USPS to get the address to complain about. Then I have to pay postage to mail the forms into the Post Office.

And then I discovered as I was filling in the opt-out form, the USPS gave me someone else’s mail! That must be against the law! I hope no one is getting my mail.

And isn’t it amazing that Comcast sends their spew from mailing addresses all across the country?