An interesting tidbit from the Guccifer 2.0 Democratic National Convention leaks reveals some impressive information regarding the robodialers that were used for the campaign and the systems and support that was brought on to assist the Democratic National Convention with their outbound and inbound calling systems. In 2010 alone, the DNC spent over $170,000 on robodialer-related expenses, outlined in an Excel spreadsheet titled “Tech Budget Draft 2010_nostaff” (sic).
As shown in the spreadsheet, the DNC had used robodialing services offered by NobelBiz – a telecommunications and contact center company based out of Carlsbad California. According to the spreadsheet, the DNC had budgeted roughly $7,000 per month for 2,000 lines – totaling over $90,000 for the entire year. Instead of having in-house support for the systems or taking advantage of the support offered by NobelBiz itself, it seems as if the DNC instead decided to use engineering staff from the German-based company Siemens to support their robodialers instead.
A full list of expenses can be found below, including an expense for $50,000 for bandwidth from Quest Communications.
DNC Robodialer Expenses - 2010/2011
*Amounts above are in ($) USD