The Voter File, VoteBuilder, VAN (Voter Activation Network) are all names for the Democratic Party of Oregon’s Voter File.
The Democratic Party of Oregon, in partnership with the DNC, maintains an online database of all the registered and potential voters in Oregon. This system is updated 12-15 times each year with new voters and vote history from the Secretary of State and enhanced with data from our vendors (new addresses, phone numbers, and consumer information).
Campaign Tool
The DPO Voter File is the primary resource for the Democratic Party of Oregon, County Parties, Caucuses, and Democratic campaigns for all voter contact activities (phone calls, door-knocking, mailings, textbanking, direct communications, etc.). The Voter File also has a feature called My Campaign which is designed to efficiently manage volunteers and volunteer activities.
Sharing Info
As a true grassroots system, the Voter File enables County Parties, Caucuses, and Democratic campaigns to benefit from each others’ efforts. If one campaign or party organization finds a bad phone number and marks it in the database, no one else will waste time calling a bad phone number. If one group collects new contact information to more efficiently contact a voter, all other groups benefit from that information. Additionally, when party organizations and political campaigns identify a new voter as a supporter (or as someone who is not a supporter of our causes) all other committees benefit from that information. With the Voter File, all campaigns can work together by sharing their voter IDs to better target their valuable resources.
Analysis
The voter file also plays an important role in examining information about voters and outreach efforts. Counts and crosstabs is a powerful tool to provide descriptive snapshots of voters using criteria like district, age, sex, party affiliation, or ethnicity (to name a few). You can view a summary of how many voters were contacted in a certain time period or location, and a detailed breakdown of the responses to a particular candidate question.
Access
To gain access to this resource, the County or Caucus Chair or their designee must request user accounts by submitting the first name, last name, and email address via email
to: [email protected].
- Please include the first and last name of the new user, their email address and desired level of access. County Chairs and Data Managers typically have the highest level of access.
- Users must have a demonstrable need for VAN access and are required to put all relevant voter and volunteer data back into the VAN for future elections.
- Individual local candidates for public office cannot use the county DPO VAN committee to campaign for themselves without approval from their county party. Local candidates who want voter file access must complete a voter file application with their county party. Their application will be reviewed and may be approved by the county Chair or other county party process. Fees for use of the voter file are set jointly by the DPO and the county party.
- An audit of existing users in your VAN committee is recommended. We are happy to make any users inactive who are no longer working with your county party.
Training
The DPO hosts voter file training webinars several times a year and can also make recordings of past trainings available to VAN users. For information on training (or if you have any questions about the voter file) email [email protected].
