A voter file is a list of all registered voters in an area. In the US most states compile this list under the organization responsible for elections. It is generally available to candidates for office and political organizations for a fee. This is sometimes also known as a Voter Roll.

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 the voter files are being directed by the 2002 Help America Vote Act

Help America Vote Act

The Help America Vote Act , or HAVA, is a United States federal law which passed in the House 357-48 and 92-2 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on October 29, 2002. Drafted in reaction to the controversy surrounding the 2000 U.S...

. It specifies certain measures each state must take to ensure that their file is compliant and compatible. Private firms often provide United States Voter Files.

Contents

In most instances the Voter File contains each voter's name, address (sometimes it also contains an alternate mailing address), birth date, date of registration, political party (if the state is a party registration state) and voting history (indicating those elections in which the voter voted, not the voter's actual votes).

Usage

Generally this data undergoes Data cleansing

Data cleansing

Data cleansing, data cleaning, or data scrubbing is the process of detecting and correcting corrupt or inaccurate records from a record set, table, or database. Used mainly in databases, the term refers to identifying incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate, irrelevant, etc...

 and is put into a voter database

Voter database

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 efforts and other areas of the campaign....

for use by political campaigns.