Voter File Matching - Catalist

Created by Ben Deverman, Modified on Tue, 16 Jul at 11:50 AM by Farhad Choksy

What is Catalist voter file matching?

Catalist voter file matching enables matching a list of records to the Catalist voter file. CTA has designed a customized workflow to allow PAD users to access and utilize Catalist matching systems without leaving the PAD environment.

What is the purpose of voter file matching, and what are some features of doing this in PAD?

Voter file matching can be helpful for various reasons. For instance, you may want to add more information to your existing data or verify whether the records in a particular file are registered to vote. We have designed our tool to be user-friendly, easy to understand, and customizable so that you can create matching jobs tailored to your requirements.

CTA’s Catalist Matching Workflow in PAD supports sending over Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and returning a DWID, Catalist’s unique record ID. You can upload raw data to retrieve DWIDs for your records. That way, you can centralize, enhance, and clean data directly in PAD.

How do I get access to Catalist Matching via CTA PAD?

Using Catalist Matching in PAD requires a contract with Catalist. If you already have an existing contract with Catalist, you can email your Catalist contact and your CTA point of contact, and our team can help get you set up.

Do you need help contacting Catalist to get this process started? You can email us at help@techallies.org – we’re happy to connect you with Catalist and help facilitate this process!

How do I use the Catalist Matching workflow in PAD?

PAD UI

Log in to PAD UI by navigating to cta.tools in your PAD account web browser.
On the top left-hand side of your page, navigate to “Matching Jobs.”
From here, you can create or manage any matching jobs.
To create a new job, click on the Create New Job button on the right-hand side of the page.
Choose a name for your job that’s fewer than 100 characters long.
Select a BigQuery data source from your PAD project.
Next, select a source table from within the dataset you want to match. Currently, the Match job requires the source to be a table, not a view.
From here, you’ll match the associated “Fields” to the designated “Catalist header” and “Column” you are matching.
Once complete, hit the “Submit Catalist Matching Job” button, and your job will start running.
You can navigate back to the Matching Jobs UI to see if your job was successful.
To find your data in PAD, navigate to the dataset where the source table is nested, and you’ll see your results as a table.

BigQuery UI/Workflow:

Log in to your cta.tools account and access your PAD Project.
Head over to Google Workflows by searching and selecting workflows in the search bar in the top center of your page or by going directly to https://console.cloud.google.com/workflows.
Select the “voterfile-matching” workflow and then click execute (to the right of ‘workflow details’).
Update the following arguments based on what you’d like the workflow to match on and copy/paste them into the input box that appears after you click Execute. Under fields, you need to include at least the required fields for matching for the vendor and can add/remove additional pairs as needed. For a valid JSON input example, see below.

{
  "vendor": "catalist",
  "fields": [
      { "fieldName": "vendor field name",
      "mappedColumn": "source table column name"
      },
{ "fieldName": "vendor field name",
      "mappedColumn": "source table column name"
      }
  ],
  "source_dataset": "dataset name",
  "source_table": "table name"
}

Run your workflow by clicking Execute in the bottom left corner! We recommend you select “All Calls” for the call log level.
Once completed, navigate to the Executions Header and click on your execution ID to see the logs, results, and additional metadata for your run.
You will also see the output containing the results table or an error indicating that the matching job failed. Assuming your workflow ran, you can find the results in your project with the table ID contained in the output. Table IDs will generally start with merged_results.
If you wish to execute the match again, hit Execute Again next to Execution Details and adjust the input as needed.

What do I need to / can I input into the workflow?

CTA’s Catalist Matching Workflow supports the following inputs:

First name
Last name
Date of birth
Home address line 1
Home address line 2
Home address city
Home address state
Home address zip code

First name, last name, and either date of birth or home state are required; all other fields are optional. However, the more data you provide, the better your match rate will be.

The workflow outputs dwid + available person fields on the record like gender, address, birthdate, and phone.

FAQs

What should I do if I don’t see matching enabled in my project?
- Catalist matching requires an active Catalist voter file license. If you do not see this enabled, please email your Catalist contact and your CTA point of contact.
- Catalist matching requires that you have appropriate permissions in your PAD project. Confirm that you are an admin or an editor in your project.
How can I improve my match rate?
- Typically, the more inputs you can provide, the better your match rate will be.

Questions or Feedback

We welcome all questions and feedback on the Catalist Matching workflow! Please feel free to send us a message at help@techallies.org.