Once the data is (yes, is, prescriptivists--I went there) in a standardized format, we move from the realm of "interesting" into "faintly creepy".  The information from Secretaries of State or state parties is generally pretty innocuous--name, address, maybe phone number or age.  The appended consumer data, on the other hand, is more unsettling.  There's nothing on there that would do real damage if anyone knew it--no credit card numbers, nothing that people could use to steal your identity--but it can be kind of strange to think who realizes that you own two dogs and a cat.

Of course, once you have a file for a given state, the work is not over.  Even keeping the file at its current state, let alone improving it, will be an ongoing process.

First of all, from the day it goes up, the data gets staler and staler.  Ideally, every state in the union will be undergo the entire process frequently--especially for states with hot races in election years. 

Aside from regular rejuvenation, however, a file can be improved upon through contact with reality.  No matter how diligent the Secretary of State, certain problems on a file will slip through the cracks.  People will move, die, or get convicted; phone numbers will change, or go bad; party registrations will be altered.  All of these changes can be captured by a well-tuned field organization, and appended to the file, so that as election day gets closer the file can asymptotically approach perfection (this is a somewhat idealized picture; bear with me). 

When volunteers go out and canvass neighborhoods or phone bank, they can verify if an address is attached to the right name or whether or not a phone number is good; they can also gather information that is simply unavailable from other sources, like a person's top issue priorities.  All of this information is gathered, centralized, and scanned in, so that the state voter file is as up-to-the-minute as possible.  In the past, this was done by hand (when it was done at all); now, the use of new technologies like computers, palm pilots and bar coding of responses has greatly increased the efficiency of doorknocking and other field techniques.

So, we've decided to try and build a voter file for Adams County in Ohio.  We've downloaded the information we need from the secretary of state, and figured out what's in the file.  But all we have now is a massive text file.  What's the next step?

As the election approaches, I thought I'd write a little more about the uses of the voter file in this particularly busy time.  It's a very different operation than it is in the earlier stages, when you're setting up your file.  By the time October rolls around, moving as much information into and out of the voter file as possible becomes paramount.  There are a couple of ways that files get used late in the game that don't show up earlier; today, appropos of last night's discussion, we're going to focus on early voting.