By Lois Beckett, ProPublica

In Minnesota, Democratic volunteers scour their local newspapers each morning for letters to the editor with a political slant. They pay attention to the names of callers on radio shows. They drive through their neighborhoods and jot down the addresses of campaign lawn signs.

Then they feed the information into a state Democratic Party database that includes nearly every voter in Minnesota.

Some of the states' few dozen data volunteers are so devoted that they log into the party database daily from their home computers. Deb Pitzrick, 61, of Eden Prairie, convinced a group of her friends to form the "Grandma Brigade." These women, in their 50s, 60s and 70s, no longer want to knock on doors for the Democrats. Instead, they support the party by gathering public information about other voters.

Much of the data the Grandma Brigade collects is prosaic: records of campaign donations or voters who have recently died. But a few volunteers see free information everywhere. They browse the listings of names on Tea Party websites. They might add a record of what was said around the family Thanksgiving table — Uncle Mitch voted for Bachmann, cousin Alice supports gay marriage.

One data volunteer even joked about holding "rat out your neighbor parties," where friends would be encouraged to add notes about the political views of other people on their block.

Once information about individual people is entered into the state party's database, it doesn't stay in Minnesota. Almost all the information collected by local volunteers like the Grandma Brigade also ends up in the party's central database in Washington.

Few places have data volunteers as dedicated as the ones in Minnesota, which has been held up as a model for other state Democratic parties. Both Democrats and Republicans have centralized databases that, among other things, track opinions you share with local campaign volunteers.

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Cenk's guest Friday on the "Aggressive Progressive" segment was Darcy Burner, who is running in Washington's first district in the Democratic primary for that seat. She has also been a guest at CrooksandLiars, and is also listed on our "Blue America" page.

Also, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos recently attended a Townhall event with Ms. Burner, where he enthusiastically endorsed her candidacy for Congress.

Cenk began with "I love this Aggressive Progressive segment and usually I do it, but I've got an even more aggressive progressive for you. Now you think, "come on, really." Well, it's Darcy Burner. You know what she advocates for, let me show you a quick little list here":

--"First of all, "suing the bejesus" out of corporations for wage discrimination,"
--"Then targeting boycotts against conservative funders"
--"And a campaign to "cast off the shame and embarassment" of women who've had an abortion"

"To which I say, "about damn time." So Darcy's going to join us now and not only is she running in Washington's first district in the Democratic primary for that seat, she also used to run ProgressiveCongress.org, and the Progressive Congress Action fund, and the list goes on and on."

Cenk: So Darcy, what are you doing? I'm told that Democrats aren't supposed to ruffle feathers; you not supposed to be an actual progressive."

Darcy: Well, you know, I think that's a big piece of the problem the Democratic Party has and maybe we should elect more Democrats with actual values.

Cenk: Shocking. Alright, now you've gotten into some quote-unquote trouble by the press there because they say that you're stridently pro-choice. Well, given that the country is 72% in favor of legalized abortion, wouldn't that seem to play to your advantage?

Darcy: One would think. One would think. But there's this culture around the idea that we should all be timid and meek and not actually stand up for the things that matter. I disagree.

Cenk: Now, Darcy, in your district they say well, look now, this is an important swing district and if we have someone clearly on the left here, it might hurt our cause. Now that's conventional wisdom, why do you disagree with that.

Darcy: That isn't what any of the actual numbers show. First, I've been polling ahead of all of the more timid, conservative, 'other' Democrats in this primary. Second, if you look at what happens around the country when you have progressives running and conservative Democrats running, progressive candidates consistently do better than the more conservative candidates. It turns out that American voters like people who will actually fight for them.

Cenk: Shocking! Republicans succeed. Why? They fight, right? They might be wrong, but they fight. Now, Elizabeth Warren also getting a ton of donations in Massachusetts, I just read a story today, they're like...wow, why? Well, it's because she fought the banks. For example, what would you do with the banks, Darcy?

Darcy: We have a huge number of bankers who have broken the laws and they should go to jail. It's long past time the people who brought down the economy for personal profit paid for it.

Via ThinkProgress:

Student Loan Debt Has Ballooned Since 1990: Many of the faces of Occupy Wall Street and the blog “We Are the 99 Percent” are former students saddled with huge college debt. These individual stories and public protests have made the nation take notice, including President Obama who announced a plan that would lower some debtors’ monthly payments. The following graphic shows how student loan debt has skyrocketed over the last 21 years, topping $1 trillion in unpaid debt:

With so many students - who are known to tend to vote liberal - what's a Republican to do but try to keep them from the polls?

The New York Times reports:

Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote.

Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.

Seven states have already passed strict laws requiring a government-issued ID (like a driver’s license or a passport) to vote, which many students don’t have, and 27 others are considering such measures. Many of those laws have been interpreted as prohibiting out-of-state driver’s licenses from being used for voting.

It’s all part of a widespread Republican effort to restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs. On Friday, the Justice Department, finally taking action against these abuses, blocked the new voter ID law in South Carolina.

Creating an explanation for the new ID laws, as Republicans don't generally want to actually say the purpose is to turn away voters, they've claimed the stricter laws are "to prevent voter fraud." However, this explanation falls flat since there is almost no voter fraud in the nation to prevent.

The stricter voter ID laws aren't just having a negative impact on the rights of students to vote: Think Progress reports that "A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations."

"Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate."