Matching Contacts to the Voter File

Matching Contacts to the Voter File

The voter file is a helpful tool that many different community organizing programs utilize. This article will describe how to match contacts between the voter file (VAN or Catalist) and Empower. 


Matching between Empower and the voter file happens both automatically and manually. Regardless if you are matching manually or automatically, you have to turn enable Pulling of information.

Manual Matching

You can manually match someone in Empower with the voter file if they weren’t automatically matched (see below for automatic matching process) or if you want to fix their automatic matching. The manual matching process works for both personal and canvassing contacts.

To manually match someone on the Empower App:

  1. Navigate to a person’s page either through My People or All People

  2. Click More, then select Match Their Contact List


  1. You will see this person’s list of contacts.

    1. For any contact that has a green matched label next to them, they were either matched automatically, matched manually, or were attempted to be matched

    2. For any contact that has a Needs more info label, you can try manually matching them. Click on the arrow next to their name



    1. On the Search For page, you can start adding information (First Name, Last Name, City, State) for the contact and clicking search. 

    2. If you see someone appear under the Which one of these is NAME question, you can select this person and match the contact with them.



    1. If you can’t find someone with the correct information, click the I give up, I can’t find them. As a reminder, the person will still have a green label saying matched next to their name, if you select I give up

To manually match someone on the Empower Mobile App:

  1. Click the settings button with the three parallel lines on the upper left hand corner of the screen then click Match your list. Volunteers can find this view by navigating to the People tab and then selecting Match list.

  1. You will see your list of contacts:
    1. For any contact that has a green matched label next to them, they were matched manually. Automatic matches will have an auto-matched label next to them.
    2. For any contact that has a not started label, they are not matched yet so you can try manually matching them. Click on the arrow next to their name.



    1. On the Search For page, you can start adding information (First Name, Last Name, City, State)
    2. If you see someone appear you can select this person and match the contact with them
    3. If you can’t find someone with the correct information, click the I can’t find them button. This person will have an attempted label.


Automatic Matching

Empower tries to automatically match new contacts with the voter file. If you are connected to VAN, Empower matches with both VAN databases: MyVoters and MyCampaign. MyCampaign has a number of different names including MyWorkers, MyMembers, and EveryAction.


For Empower to automatically match a contact with the voter file, there must be a unique match. Empower tries to find a unique match using the criteria listed below. Empower also uses the order listed below in trying to find a unique match. If any of these searches return with a unique match, then Empower automatically matches:


  • First, Empower tries to find a match using email

  • Second, Empower tries to find a match using phone numbers

  • Third, Empower tries to find a match with first name, last name, and email

  • Fourth, Empower tries to find a match with first name, last name, and phone number

  • Fifth, Empower tries to find a match with first name, last name, city, and state (both first name and last name are required for this step)


If these searches don’t return with a unique match, then there is no automatic match.  Fuzzy matching will occur for names (e.g. Sam will match with Samuel).


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