The Voters in Mind system uses words and phrases which have specific meanings. This page defines some of these which may need clarifying.

Address See "Dwelling"

Campaign You might think of this as an election. A period of time which finishes with the last voting day of an electoral campaign. This is not necessarily an official "campaign period". One of the first things to be done when starting to use Voters in Mind is to set up a campaign - even if this election isn't scheduled to take place for 4 years or more. Once a campaign is over, one might immediately create a new campaign using the next Voting Day date, assuming it's known. If one doesn't know exactly when the next voting day is, a campaign can still be created using an estimated date which can be changed once the actual Voting Day becomes known. Many things in the system are done within the context of (or grouped within) a "campaign".

Campaign Dwellings & Voters There should only be one record for each dwelling and one record for each voter in the system. If duplicates of either are discovered they should be merged together. Both dwellings and voters tend to survive the completion of a campaign and are used in subsequent campaigns, but some things may happen to both dwellings and voters in one campaign but not in another. For example, somebody might cast a vote in one 2016, but not in 2020. Such things are handled by use of "campaign dwellings" and "campaign voters". When a new campaign is created, one of the first things that should be done is the importation of an electoral list (or list of names and addresses.) If voters already exist from a previous campaign, the Import Data function handles the copying of dwellings and voters into the new campaign. This process dows not create new dwellings and voters, but associates dwellings and voters with the new campaign - which as a by-product cause a number of new dwellings and voters to be created. This allows the system to keep track of information for each voter and dwelling from campaign to campaign. For example, Mary Smith may live at 100 Happy Street when she voted in 2016, but for the 2020 election she lives at 200 Lovely Crescent. Because a new "Mary Smith" wasn't created simply because she moved, all of the information you have pertaining to her can be found.

Campaign Voters See "Campaign Dwellings & Voters"

District See "Political Area"

Dwelling A place where one or more people may live - in most cases can be referred to as an "address". Dwellings can be detached houses or an apartments. When an electoral list is imported into Voters in Mind, each address (dwelling) is compared to dwellings already recorded in the database. If the dwelling cannot be found, a unique, sequentially numbered code is assigned to this new address and written to the database. For one's first election (campaign) thousands of dwellings may need to be created in the database. For subsequent elections in the same political area (district) it may not be necessary for any new dwellings to be created...unless there has been new construction. The phrasing "may live" is not an accident. For any given campaign it is quite possible that there will be (a) dwelling(s) which have no voters assigned to them. Unless a building is destroyed, re-numbered, or otherwise becomes uninhabitable you may never need to delete dwellings from the system.

Election See "Campaign"

Electoral List A list of voters, typically distributed to all officially registered candidates at some point before election day by a government agency. This list typically contains, the name, address, and potentially other information about registered voters. Voters in Mind allows for the importation of such lists. If such lists are not provided, then any list containing the names and addresses of people who may be expected to vote in the coming election may be imported into the system.

Mailing Address See "Dwelling"

Political Area May also be referred to as a "district" or "ward". Voters in Mind is designed to group dwellings together within a "political area". For example, if you are running for city councillor in a city which is split up into 10 districts, your database may only contain information for one political area. If you are running for mayor of the whole city, you will probably have all 10 political areas defined seperately, although you could just use the whole city as one political area - although this might be cumbersome to maintain and deal with depending upon how large your city is. In addition, using the system's security you could set things up so that only certain members of your campaign team have acccess to certain political areas, limiting the damage which could be caused by a rogue staffer.

Poll Number It is expected that each district will be split up into a number of "polls" each of which has a number of voters. Every voter should be assigned to a dwelling for the current campaign. Every dwelling should be assigned to a poll. Each poll is within a political area. A poll number can be up to 5 characters in length.

Poll Voter Number Each voter within a poll should be assigned a poll voter number. This poll voter number must be unique within each poll. If the government agency umpiring your election has not seen fit to supply a voters list (electoral list) with voters names, addresses, polls, and poll voter numbers, then the list of voters you are importing into the system should be so modified with arbitrary poll voter numbers. Poll voter numbers allows a campaign to easily record who has voted, and "cross them off the list" so that on election day, resources are not expended on people who have already voted.

Voted List A list of voters who have, or who have not yet voted. It is assumed by the system that a voter has not voted in any given campaign until it is flagged as such. Therefore unless errors are being corrected, voted lists being imported will probably only contain lists of voters who have voted. The voted lists must contain information corresponding to voters in the current campaign, such as the district (political area) he or she lives in, the poll number to which he or she has been assigned and his or her poll voter number. The voted list may also include the date and time the voter cast his or her vote but this is not required. Recording who has voted can be done manually in the Record Votes functions. Recording who has voted can save significant election day effort by allowing your campaign team to ignore those who have already voted, allowing it to focus on those who have not yet gone to the polls. In addition, whether or not somebody has voted in previous elections may be a good indicator of how likely this person will vote in subsequent elections, and therefore provide an indication of how much time and money to invest in swaying this person's vote.

Voters The people who vote. The people you care about. The people who can make a difference. The people who you hope to work for.

Voters List See "Electoral List"