When Bill Dallas first heard that 15 to 20 million Christians in the U.S. are not registered to vote, he couldn’t believe it.
“Initially, it surprised me. And then I thought to myself, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not registered,’ Dallas says. “Why wasn’t I registered? Well, because I didn’t think my vote made a difference.”
Dallas, an evangelical Christian, has since become a voter. He now runs United In Purpose, a nonprofit startup company that uses data mining to identify unregistered Christians.
The company persuaded wealthy Silicon Valley conservatives to help fund the creation of a database of as many adults in the U.S. as they can find. So far, UIP has added 180 million.
The company buys lists to build a profile of each citizen, and then assigns points for certain characteristics. You get points if you’re on an anti-abortion list or a traditional marriage list. You get a point if you regularly attend church or home-school your kids. You get points if you like NASCAR or fishing.
“If [your score] totaled over 600 points, then we realized you were very serious about your faith,” Dallas says. “Then we run that person against the voter registration database. … If they were not registered, that became one of the key people we were going to target to go after.”
