Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of Polling Samples does Voterlistsonline.com offer?

Voterlistsonline.com Ver. 2 offers the following options: 1. No polling sample - All records fitting the selected criteria are exported. 2. Random Sample - The user enters the number of records they wish to export, for example 5,000. All the records fitting the select criteria are assigned a random number and ordered by this random number. The first 5,000 records (per this example) would then be selected for export. 3. Targeted Random Sample - The user selects a target field, for example congressional district. By clicking on the “allocate” button, the application will display the list of values in the selected field and count of available records per each. Using the congressional district example, all of the congressional districts and the count of records per each one meeting the selected criteria would be displayed. The user then goes through the list and enters the number of records per each congressional district they wish to pull. For example, the user might want 1,000 records from each congressional district. The final file will consist of the total number of records selected by the user, allocated as the user specifies based on the target field selected. 4.Cluster Sample with target group of Records fitting the selected criteria are ordered using a geographic sort. The user then selects the number of clusters they wish to pull, and how many records should be in each cluster (cluster size). For example, the user may specify 100 clusters of 25 records each (for a total of 2500 records). The records fitting the selected criteria would then be segmented into 100 clusters, and the top 25 records from each cluster will be selected for export. (Note that if you choose to export voters instead of households, you will very likely get multiple members of each household as they will be ordered together geographically). 5. Cluster Sample with target group of Performs the same as a cluster sample with no target group defined, except that when a target group is selected the application will pull the requested number of clusters per each value in the target field. For example, if the user specifies 100 clusters with a size of 25 with a target group of “congressional district”, the application will pull 100 clusters of size 25 for each available congressional district in the sample universe. Thus if the user has a query defined which contains three different congressional districts, the final pull would be 7500 records instead of 2500 if no target group were selected. 6. Normalized Random Sample The Normalized Random Sample option allows the user to make a random pull proportioned according to the counts of available records in a group of selected target fields. For example a user might wish to generate a 25,000 record sample normalized by gender and party. In this case the user would enter the total number of records desired (in this case 25,000) and then select which clauses in their query should define the universe from which to base the normalized sample. If the user does not select any clauses, the universe will consist of the entire population of non-moved/non-dead records in the state(s) being queried. To normalize on gender and party the user would then select gender and party from the list of fields. The pull is made by first counting the numbers of each gender and party combination in the defined universe, and then making a proportionate pull based on those percentages to arrive at the total number of records requested.



How does the Vote History Selection process work on VLO 2.0?

Simple Vote History queries: Simple queries such as "Voted in 2 of the last 3 general elections" can be created using the righthand pane in the Vote History section. Select the elections you are interested in using the dropdown boxes and at the bottom of the right pane select the "Vote Count" and the "Vote Frequency" to go along with your selection and click "OK" to add your vote history selection to your query. Complex Vote History Queries: The custom query tool on the left hand side of the vote history tab allows you to create complex queries by combining two or more vote history queries using the Union and Intersect operators. To use this feature, use the vote history dropdowns to select a combination of elections and values that you wish to query. Once you have made your selections, click the green + sign and your query will appear in the query pane on the left hand side. You can then make additional selections from the vote history dropdowns to add another query to the query pane. To combine the two queries you have created into a single complex query, select each of the queries you wish to combine and then use the Union operator to combine them with an OR (query A or query B) or use the Intersect operator to combine them with an AND (query A and query B). Once you have combined them, the new combined query will appear in the query pane. EXAMPLE: Suppose you want your vote history criteria to consist of all voters who voted in at least one of the last four general elections and who also did not vote in the 2008 presidential primary. First you would create the “voted in at least one of the last four general elections” query by selecting the most recent 4 available general elections and choosing “Voted” in each of the dropdowns, then selecting the appropriate radio buttons at the bottom of the screen (in this case “at least” and “1” for “voted in at least one”). After making these selections, click the green + sign to move this query to the custom query pane on the left. Then go back to the vote history dropdowns and construct a second query for the “did not vote in the 2008 presidential primary” portion of the search criteria. Choose “Not Voted” from the 2008 Presidential Primary dropdown. Click the green + sign to move this query over to the custom query pane. Next, select both of the queries you have just created and click the “Intersect” button. This will create a third query that combines the first two queries: “Voted in one of the last four general elections AND did not vote in the 2008 presidential primary”. Select this final query from the query pane and click “Add to query” to add it to your main query at the bottom of the screen.



How do you use the Custom Searching in VLO 2.0?

The custom query tool on the left hand side of the Custom Searching tab allows you to create complex queries by combining two or more custom search queries using the Union and Intersect operators. To use this feature, use the custom search dropdown to select the field you wish to query, the operator to use (contains, greater than, etc) and enter a value or list of values in the custom search text box. Once you have made your selection, click the green + sign and your query will appear in the query pane on the left hand side. You can then make additional selections from the custom search dropdowns to add another query to the query pane. To combine the two queries you have created into a single complex query, select each of the queries you wish to combine and then use the Union operator to combine them with an OR (query A or query B) or use the Intersect operator to combine them with an AND (query A and query B). Once you have combined them, the new combined query will appear in the query pane. For example, suppose you wish to create a custom search query of voters who are registered Republican or who have contributed to a Republican political campaign. Even though both party code and contributor data are searchable in other portions of VLO, you would need to use the custom search page to construct this query so that you can specify that you wish to have an OR relationship between party code and political contributor, and so that you can specify a specific value (in this case R) for Political Contributor. To create the query, you would first create the “party code Republican” portion of the query by selecting “Party Code” from the field list drop down, “contains” from the operator dropdown, and typing an R in the text box. After making these selections, click the green + sign to move this query to the custom query pane on the left. Then create a second query for the “contributed to a Republican political campaign” portion of the search criteria. Choose “Political Contributor” from field list dropdown, “contains” from the operator dropdown, and type an R in the text box. Click the green + sign to move this query over to the custom query pane. Next, select both of the queries you have just created and click the “Union” button. This will create a third query that combines the first two queries with an OR operator: “Party code R OR Political contributor R”. Once you have finished with your custom search selections, select your final query from the custom query pane and click “Add to query” and your custom query will be added to your main query at the bottom of the screen.



How do I draw a Map using the Geospatial option on VLO 2.0?

VLO Mapping To use this feature, begin by typing in your Location of Interest, which can be a city, specific address, zip code, or basically any other geographic point. Click the LOCATE button and your location of interest will appear on the map. You can now choose to perform 1 of 3 different GeoSpatial Searches. 1. Bounding Box Search 2. Radius Search 3. Polygon Search The first is a Bounding Box Search, which will draw a box around your specific geography of interest. Choose the Bounding Box Search button under GeoSpatial Searches to begin. To draw the box, first zoom in/out to ensure that you can view your entire geography of interest on the map. To draw a box, left click on a point inside the map, move your mouse until desired shape is formed, and right click with your mouse to complete the shape. A count of all voters within that box will then generate and your box count will appear in the query pane at the left tool bar. You can draw more than one box (by following the previous steps) and choose to intersect (OR) or union (AND) to achieve overall counts. Once you choose intersect or union, the geography you have selected will be added to the query at the bottom of the page. The second GeoSpatial Search is a Radius Search, which will draw a radius (of whatever distance you choose) extending from a particular data point. One would use this option when wanting to capture all voters that live a certain distance from a point of interest. Choose the Radius Search button under GeoSpatial Searches to begin. To draw the radius, first zoom in/out to ensure that you can view your entire geography of interest on the map. To draw a radius, left click on the center point of the radius, move your mouse until the desired radius distance is calculated, and right click on your mouse to complete the shape. A count of all voters within that radius will then generate & your shape count will appear in the query pane at the left tool bar. You can draw more than one radius (by following the previous steps) and choose intersect (OR) or union (AND) to achieve overall counts. Once you choose intersect or union, the geography you have selected will be added to the main query at the bottom of the page. The third GeoSpatial Search is a Polygon Search, which allows you to draw any type of shape around your specific geography of interest. One would use this option when using street boundaries to define a geography. Choose the Polygon Search button under GeoSpatial Searches to begin. To draw the polygon, first zoom in/out to ensure that you can view your entire geography of interest on the map. To draw a polygon, left click on the first point of your polygon and then move your mouse to the next point of the polygon and left click again. Continue moving your mouse to each point of the polygon and left clicking until your desired boundaries are formed. At this point, right click to generate a count of all voters within that polygon, which will appear in the query pane at the left tool bar. You can draw more than one polygon (by following the previous steps) and choose intersect (OR) or union (AND) to achieve overall counts. Once you choose intersect or union, the geography you have selected will be added to the query at the bottom of the page. To clear any GeoSpatial Searches from the map & query pane, click the Red “X” button on the left tool bar. To clear from the main query at the bottom of the page, click the pencil erase icon on the left tool bar. Shapes that you generate will store for 60 days so that you can easily access them in the future.



What is the VLO 2.0 Pivot Table and how do I use it?

The pivot option allows you to create summary counts along multiple dimensions. For example, suppose you have generated a count of unique phone numbers statewide with a certain criteria set and within this criteria set you wish to see summary counts by county and political party. First, select “Phone” from the count type dropdown if you wish to count only unique phones in your summary counts. Select Residence County FIPS from the field list dropdown on the left hand side of the pivot screen, and select Party Code from the field list drop down at the top of the screen. If you wish, you can adjust the slider to include only values that occur a certain minimum number of times. When you are ready, click the “Get Pivot” button. When the results are generated, they will display the county codes down the left side of the grid and the party codes across the top in a cross-tabular format. To view a graphical representation of the data summary you have generated, click the >> button. You can also export the results to excel by clicking the “Excel Export” button.



What is the method used for Householding the selection?

Two voters at the same address with the same surname are in the same household. The first part of your selection works as usual: individual voter records qualify for selects based on their individual features.

Our Householding method relies on the fact that the statewide voter file has been processed for Householding already. During this process, each record is assigned a Household number unique within each county.

Members of a common Household are assigned the same Household number if they are determined to be in the same Household. NOTE: Generally, voters are considered to be in the same Household if they share the following in common: home ZIP, home street name, home pre-direction, home post direction, home house number, last name and home apartment number.

To get a count of Unique Households check the Unique Households count option on the right side toolbar on VLO 2.0. To Purchase a Householded File (one voter per household) select “Households” in Step Two of the Purchase process.



How do I search by SCF?

On the Query Builder --Select Add Custom Search --Use the dropdown on the top right side of the displayed page --Select "Residence Zipcode" (fields are in alpha order). --Select "Partially Contains" from the dropdown list of "connections" --Type into the large text box a 3 digit SCF followed by % enclosed in quotes. -- For example -- "100%" (include the double quotes) If you are looking for only one SCF, click OK to add this SCF to your query string. If you are looking for multiple SCFs continue with these instructions without clicking OK. --Click the Green Plus button on the left side of the screen --This adds the first SCF to the String Builder list on left. --Continue to follow these instructions for as many SCFs as you need. --Select "Residence Zipcode". --Select "Partially Contains" from the dropdown list of "connections" --Type into the large text box the 3 digit SCF followed by %enclosed in quotes --For example -- "101%" --Click the green plus button on the left --When you have selected all the SCFs you need, place a checkmark next to each in the boxes on the leftside of the screen and Click the "UNION" Button. In our example you would place a checkmark next to SCFs 100 and 101 and click UNION. --Click "Add to Query" Button --Click OK to return to the Query Builder This example would give you all zipcodes starting with 100 and 101. It is also possible to find a span of SCFs by using the connector Greater Than and Less Than along with the SCFs that encompass your universe. For example to find all zipcodes with SCFs 180 or greater, up to and excluding 183 -- use the Dropdown menus and text box on right side of the screen: --1st string would be Residence Zipcode Greater than or equal to "180%" --Click Green Plus Sign --2nd string would be Residence Zipcode Less than "183%" --Click Green Plus Sign --Place checkmarks in boxes to left of each --Click "INTERSECTION" (And) button --Click "Add to Query" Button --Click OK to return to the Query Builder



I cannot seem to find a local level query such as a school board, township, etc. How do I get a count for local level offices?

Using Query Manager in VLO 2.0 select Jurisdiction -> County -> Precinct -> Click Button to "Load Precincts". Once this list displays Ward, Precinct and Precinct Name. Often you can use this information to create your select. Under Jurisdiction it is also possible to use Mail City/Zip and Resident City/Zip in order to help locate your voters.

If none of these give you the political geography you need then you can use our "Custom Search" option in order to search any of the fields available in our database for the state you are using.

In Classic VLO - First, select a jurisdiction, typically the county, in STEP ONE). Select the other criteria you need in STEPS TWO through FIVE. On STEP SIX, check off all available boxes such as precinct name, number, ward, etc. This list will take a moment to load so be patient. Once you see the list of valid precincts, select all of them that fall within the boundaries of the district you're looking for.



What is the "Add File for Deduping" option and how do I use it?

The "Add File for Deduping" option found on your My Files page allows you to load lists of API_IDs to your "Query Builder" Deduping Option for use in suppressing records from subsequent selections. To Use: First: Create a Text File of Record IDs (API_IDs) for uploading to VLO •Creating the Text File --Each record downloaded from Voterlistsonline.com contains a field called “API_ID”. This is a unique identifier for each record across all of our state databases. We use this as the key for our Suppression (Deduping) option. --Open a document in Word, Notepad, or any other program that allows you to save it as a .txt file. --Add each API_ID on its own line, creating a list of IDs one column wide --Save your document(s) to a location you will later use as part of the loading to VLO function. •Tips --Having each file created contain API_IDs from one state helps with query speed --Creating one large rather than many small files per state also helps with query speed. --Once your file has been loaded to VLO it can not be modified Next Go to your My Files Tab and on the right side click on "Add Files for Deduping" link. Step 1 • Click the Blue “Add File” button Step 2 • In the displayed form click the Grey “Browse” Button to locate your file. • Use the “Name” field to give your online file a name for future reference. This is the name that will be displayed in the list of files under the “Dedupe” option on our Query Builder. • Select a State (if your file contains API_IDs from multiple states do not select a state) Step 3 • Click the blue “Add” button to add your selected file to your list. You will receive an online success message if your file has successfully been added. Step 4 • Optional step if you have additional files to add follow steps 1 through 3 again for each additional file you want upload. Step 5 • When you have added all of your files, click the “Send Now” button to make them part of your “Dedupe” list available in your Query Builder. You will get both an onscreen success message as well as an email notification to the address in your VLO account.



I don't see a file I want to use for Deduping under the Query Builder Dedupe Option - where is it?

All purchased files can be used for deduping. Two VLO features control what you see in your list. 1) You will see only files for your selected state listed as available for deduping. Be sure to select the state you want to work in first. 2) Files that are archived will not appear on the deduping list. Be sure to unarchive any file you want to use for deduping purposes.



How do I retrieve an Archived file?

On your "My Files" page place a check in the box at the top that says "show all" in the "archive" column. Your page will refresh and archived files will now be displayed. Remember to select the timeframe and number of files you want to view by selecting from options under "List Filter" on the lower left side of your screen.



What is the difference between Unique Address count and Unique Household count?

A Unique Address count returns a count of unique physical addresses matching your query regardless of the name of the individuals living at the addresses. A count of Unique Households returns a count where individuals sharing an address but not sharing a last name would be each be considered a Household. For Ex. a husband and wife living at the same address but not sharing the same last name would EACH be considered a Household.



How are Phone Lists and Walk Sheets ordered?

These paper output formats are order by ward,precinct,zip,odd/even home address,Home Sequence Number,lastname,firstname.



A select run yesterday for voters age 55+ had one count, but the same criteria input today resulted in a slightly different count. Why?

As an online product, VLO calculates age based on the date of the select.

So any given voter may cross into one age range and out of another on their birthday. From day to day, these will not change dramatically, though.



What are the State restrictions pertaining to the use of voter data?

The state restrictions to the use of the data can be found on each State Summary page. You can access the State Summary page by clicking the link to the right of the State Selection Dropdown in VLO 2.0. All of our voter files are delivered to our users via a secure FTP download link There are 2 states-Pennsylvania and Arizona with more stringent protection in place. These state files are delivered via FTP link as well but are password protected.

The information gained from Voterlistsonline.com is not to be considered a consumer report (as that term is defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act 15 U.S.C. sec 1681) and may not be used to determine a consumer's eligibility for credit or insurance for personal, family or household purposes, employment or a government license or benefit.

For further information about each state’s authorized use of the voter data, please refer to the following list:

ALABAMA

POLITICAL

ALASKA

UNRESTRICTED

ARIZONA

POLITICAL

ARKANSAS

UNRESTRICTED

CALIFORNIA

POLITICAL AND SCHOLARLY

COLORADO

UNRESTRICTED

CONNECTICUT

UNRESTRICTED

DC

UNRESTRICTED

DELAWARE

UNRESTRICTED

FLORIDA

UNRESTRICTED

GEORGIA

NON-COMMERCIAL

HAWAII

ELECTION AND GOVERNMENT USE

IDAHO

NON-COMMERCIAL

ILLINOIS

POLITICAL

INDIANA

POLITICAL

IOWA

POLITICAL

KANSAS

NON-COMMERCIAL

KENTUCKY

NON-COMMERCIAL

LOUISIANA

UNRESTRICTED

MAINE

UNRESTRICTED

MARYLAND

Maryland voter data may be used for purposes related to the electoral process only.

MASSACHUSETTS

UNRESTRICTED

MICHIGAN

UNRESTRICTED

MINNESOTA

POLITICAL

MISSISSIPPI

UNRESTRICTED

MISSOURI

NON-COMMERCIAL

MONTANA

NON-COMMERCIAL

NEBRASKA

POLITICAL

NEVADA

UNRESTRICTED

NEW HAMPSHIRE

UNRESTRICTED

NEW JERSEY

UNRESTRICTED EXCEPT NO COMMERCIAL SOLICITATION

NEW MEXICO

Restrictions include but not limited to Section 105024 of the New Mexico Election Code: I hereby swear that the New Mexico voter list shall be used for governmental, election and election campaign purposes, and shall not be made available or used for commercial or unlawful purposes.

NEW YORK

POLITICAL

NORTH CAROLINA

UNRESTRICTED

OHIO

UNRESTRICTED

OKLAHOMA

UNRESTRICTED

OREGON

NON-COMMERCIAL

PENNSYLVANIA

POLITICAL

RHODE ISLAND

POLITICAL

SOUTH CAROLINA

NO COMMERCIAL SOLICITATION

SOUTH DAKOTA

POLITICAL

TENNESSEE

POLITICAL

TEXAS

UNRESTRICTED EXCEPT NO COMMERCIAL SOLICITATION

UTAH

UNRESTRICTED

VERMONT

NON-COMMERCIAL

VIRGINIA

Restrictions include but not limited to Article 2 Section 24 of the Commonwealth of Virginia Election Code: Voter lists shall only be made available for political purposes, and only to candidates and elected officials for their districts, and party committees and officers. The list may also be made available to courts for jury selection purposes. The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that the list may also be provided to PACs for political purposes.

WASHINGTON

POLITICAL

WEST VIRGINIA

POLITICAL

WISCONSIN

UNRESTRICTED

WYOMING

POLITICAL




How are voters marked as Dead?

Aristotle runs all voter files against a database of government agency-reported individuals who are believed to be deceased.

Those who match on at least FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME and BIRTHDATE are excluded from the output. Although it's possible for us to mark someone as dead when they actually are not, the great benefit of this feature is that you will not be calling or mailing hundreds or thousands of voters who are very likely to be no longer with us.



What is Change of Address Update?

Every address is passed through a United States Postal Service (USPS) Change Of Address (COA) database every 30 days, standardizing all addresses and updating the address of those individuals who have moved and filed a COA with the USPS.



What is the pricing for data purchased online at Voterlistsonline.com

VoterListsOnline.com™ is designed to allow users to run counts and selects from voter files at the lowest costs possible. Counts are free - to everyone, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Data is very reasonably priced $30 per thousand standard records selected.* There is a $30 minimum charge, and any selects under 1,000 records will be charged the minimum amount. Files generated using our Premium Fields (marked with green dollar signs) are billed at .06/record*. Polling Samples are available - Random, Clustered, Normalized samples! * Only those records established as your polling sample will be assessed a charge. The universe of records from which your sample is taken are not included in this charge. These low prices are only possible because you - the user - will be running the process from start to finish over the internet. Run as many counts with as many or as few search criteria as you want. Then click on "CHECK OUT" when you've determined your select and are ready to purchase. Your query will be executed, you will be prompted for credit card payment (Amex, Visa/MC or Discover) and then you will be able to download your file in any of several formats. If you have any problems or questions, e-mail us at vlosupport@aristotle.com. *Except Polling Samples -- Random and Cluster -- are priced by record range as follows: Number of Records Standard Price Premium Record Price 1 - 25,000 $750 $1500 25,001 - 50,000 $1500 $3000 50,001 or more $.030 / record $.060 / record



What settings and plugins are necessary in order to access and use VLO?

1. In order that our site display and work as intended on your computer please make sure that you are using one of these browsers: IE 7.0 or higher Firefox 3.0 or higher Safari 2.0 or higher 2. You will need both Flash and Java installed on your computer. These are both free plug-ins that can be found online at: Java http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp Flash http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ 3. Setting your screen resolution to 1280 x 800 will improve your overall experience. 4. Once you have logged into the site you will have access to several areas that provide additional information about our site and the data it searches. We recommend reviewing each area in order to have all the information you need to select the voters you want. -- Notifications and Tips are posted for you in your VLO mailbox – new notifications are added each time we update a feature or update our data. -- Each state has a “State Summary” containing information specific to the database for that state. You can access this information using the link next to the State Selection dropdown.



Why might there be a handful of addresses outside the state of my selection? (Even if movers have been excluded.)

Our source data (from Secretaries of State and/or county Boards of Election) could have a mailing address different than the registration address.

If this is provided by the source and not assigned by Aristotle during the address update enhancement process, the voter will not be designated as a "mover" on the voter file.

For example, many jurisdictions often list residence addresses outside of their own jurisdiction as well, not just mailing addresses. For instance, military and “federal only” registered voters can have foreign addresses, as well as many states just having residence address marked in another state.



Why is the count zero?

Sometimes you may get a count result = 0. The only way to figure out why that happened is to remove some of the criteria, carefully, until you get a non-zero result. If you are over-specific, you'll get small counts, of course, and eventually you'll eliminate all voters.

Voter files are built locally, by counties and towns. Some jurisdictions may have information that is not available in all jurisdictions. The most common culprit is vote history that is generally available in most areas, but not in the one you've selected. If you've selected, for instance, 2004 AND 2006 general elections, but the county you need simply never reported the 2004 vote history, you'll get a zero count.

It is often helpful to run counts on a more general level first (such as all voters in a given county) and then add search criteria one at a time. This process will also educate you on the profile of the area from which you are selecting.



What is "Deadwood" and how much is there?

"Deadwood" should be excluded so that the final selection to be downloaded only includes valid records. This term refers to both records matching to the Dead file and Movers.



Why won't the downloaded file open? It was supposed to be an Excel file...

All the files are "zipped" or compressed prior to downloading. This keeps the time to download kept to a minimum.

WinZip is a pretty common software package designed to open this type of file. A trial version of the software is available free by visiting www.winzip.com, although some e-mail programs (including America Online) will decompress these files automatically.

Once decompressed or "unzipped", the resulting file (with the same name but a different extension) can be opened with Excel.



Can I order data using selections that aren't available at www.voterlistsonline.com?

Yes, in two ways. For smaller orders, the most economical way is to simply order more voters than you need, and make the selection on your end. For larger orders, we'll do the work for you. Just contact our sales staff at sales@aristotle.com to discuss whether you'd like to order a custom select.

Note that custom selects are priced at a minimum of $2000, regardless of the quantity.



How long should it take to get a count using VoterListsOnline?

When you click on the "Recalculate" button, our software sends a command to the database server to begin the count. Naturally we do everything we can to make that search go quickly. We optimize for the most common searches, of course, so a count of all female voters in a certain county should run in a few seconds. A very complicated vote history search will take a minute or two.

The most time consuming step will come if you choose a large sample from a large selection. In that case you may need to wait for several minutes.

If you don't have a response for as much as ten minutes, please contact us at vlosupport@aristotle.com



Are the lists of all registered voters, or actual voters?

Aristotle compiles these lists of registered voters from Secretaries of State, county boards of election and the like. In some cases they even include voters marked as inactive (in the status field). In VLO 2.0 Query Builder you can exclude Inactive Voters by selecting Vote History -> Voter Status -> Exclude All Inactive Voters. In Classic VLO you can exclude these voters on the vote history Step 5. The vote history fields indicate whether each voter actually participated in a given election, but not for whom the voter voted, of course.

Keep in mind that the vote history data vary greatly and in some regions are not available at all.



How do I search for a specific aged voter in DC?

The DC Voter file contains an Age Category for each voter rather than a specific birthdate or age. When DC is your selected “state” the option to search “Age Category” will appear under the Demographics portion of your query builder.



Why does the number of male voters plus the number of female voters not add up to the total number of voters?

When gender is not provided by the source, we assign a sex based on the FIRSTNAME.

For some names, we can't be sure (Pat, Chris, etc.), and for uncommon names, we simply don't know.



Why should "movers" be excluded?

If you exclude "movers" by leaving a check mark in the box in Step Four, any voters marked as having submitted a "Change of Address" with the United States Postal Service will be left out of the final selection.

Although the voter may still be registered at a given address, once it's indicated that they have moved from this address, the likelihood of his or her participation in an election is lowered.

As with dead, it's possible that some of these records still represent valid voters in your selection. However, by omitting these records, you will not only be charged less for your selection, but you can save the expense of using phones and mail (or volunteer time) in a futile effort to contact thousands of voters who just aren't there anymore.



What does collection date refer to?

Collection date reflects the date when the voter file was received from the source.



How is Congressional District Determined in the voter list?

The district information is determined, displayed, and downloaded according to the information provided by the registrar of voters at the time of acquisition of the voter file. The registrar and the NCOA processing may indicate a mail or home address other than inside the registrar assigned district. Individuals who may have moved, re-registered or been removed from the registrars list since the time of acquisition may still be present on this list. VLO does not perform any re-assignment of districts. If you chose to “Exclude Movers”, normally the default, VLO will exclude individuals who have been identified by the Aristotle NCOA process as moving irrespective of the nature of the move. This may not exclude all non-district individuals.



Do you have a question about your Voter Registration Status?

If so, Voterlistsonline.com may not be the site for you. Voterlistsonline is a list service for candidates, campaigns and consultants. There are no options available for searching by name or individual address. If you need to determine your voter status you should contact your State Board of Elections. They will be able to answer this question for you.



What's involved in building Aristotle's voter files?

Aristotle puts a lot of time, money and energy into building the database on which VoterListsOnline.com depends.

Different states take longer than others, for a multitude of reasons.

Some state source files are collected from just one location, others require us to contact each county, or even each town in the New England states.

Even in those states where the file is available from the Secretary of State (or similar office) and ready for use on a computer, Aristotle often collects more detailed vote history or political geography by contacting the counties independently and adding this information to the state voter file. Once the original data is collected from the authorities it is transformed into a national-wide standard format. The data is scrubbed extensively to do things like standardize addresses to USPS standards. The voters are organized into households so that voters can be identified by the variety of party registrations within their household, the the number of people in their household, and where they rank when the voters are sorted by age or registration date. All phone numbers are checked against outside directories, and those that are verified are marked as such so that you can, if you choose, concentrate on selecting voters with the phone numbers most likely to be current and correct. Commercial data is appended to the voter files, like marital status, estimated income, presence of children in the household, etc., to aid in microtargeting. Other data points like latitude and longitude and a sort order are added to aid in building walk lists. In summary, everything we do is aimed toward either helping you target the voters you want to reach, or actually contacting them by mail, phone or in person.

For even more details, contact Aristotle by e-mail at vlosupport@aristotle.com. Please indicate the specific state(s) in which you are interested.