Electoral software

A voter database is a database containing information on voters for the purpose of assisting a political party or an individual politician, in their Get out the vote (GOTV) efforts and other areas of the campaign.

In most countries, the election agency makes the electoral roll available to all campaigns soon after the election campaign has begun. Campaigns can then merge this information with the other data they have collected on voters over the years to create their database. Often basic information such as phone numbers and postal codes are not included on the voters list, and the campaign will have to procure this data as well.

The United States does not have a federal election agency, and thus has no official national voter list. In 2002, the United States Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA required that each state compile an official state voter database by January 2006. Most states complied with HAVA by gathering the voter files available from each individual county. States decided what information to include, what restrictions to place on the use of their voter database, and how much the database would cost. In the United States, several companies have merged state voter information with commercially obtained data to create comprehensive voter databases that include a plethora of personal details on each voter. These companies often provide United States Voter Files to statutorily permitted or otherwise non-restricted users.

The voter database is central to many parts of a campaign:

Personal data frequently included in a voter database:

Data that may be added via commercial routes:

The use of voter databases has been established in political campaigns from local school board to national elections:

In the 2004 presidential election in the United States, the Republican Party used the Voter Vault platform and the Democratic Party used DataMart. Currently, the Republicans use rVotes Data Center and the Democrats use Votebuilder from the Voter Activation Network (VAN). There are non-partisan firms that offer registered voter data in the United States, too: NationBuilder, Aristotle, eMerges and Labels and Lists.

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