Is data about US voters available in electronic form?  I'm looking for
name and address data as a minimum and if possible email address and
demographic data such as age, gender.  The data may not actually be
voter data but could be deduced from motor vehicle data, for instance.
 Is this data available as a file?  I realize the data may not be in
one location but may be available from the various states.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 28 Jun 2003 09:40 PDT

Hmmm...there are many sources of mailing list information that pretty
much covers the entire adult population of the United States.  If this
is what you need, I can certainly direct you to appropriate sources of
name and address information (email info is harder to come by) that
also include some demographic info.  But be forewarned, these are
commercial lists and cost a fair chunk of change to purchase.

If you're specifically after voter lists, there actually are a few
such lists available on the internet (not many!), and they tend to be
at the local level (city or county).

For instance, there's a list of 51,247 names/addresses at this site
for Grant County:

http://www.grantcounty.net/grant/grant.fwx?D08LIST

but you can only access the list 25 names at a shot, and there's a
limit to how much info is available beyond just name and address. 
Other lists are even more cumbersome to use.

Somehow, I suspect that these lists won't meet your needs.

Let me know a bit more about whether anything I've mentioned here
would suit your purposes and perhaps I -- or another researcher -- can
find the right list to meet your needs.

---

Clarification of Question by ndj-ga on 28 Jun 2003 10:42 PDT

Small chunks of voter data would be too daunting an effort.  I'd like
the data in larger groups.  I was looking for data in the public
domain as a preference but if that doesn't seem to be realistically
available I'll consider a commercial purchase.  Again, being able to
contact people via email would be preferred so I'd like to look at
those opportunities, too, even though the subset will certainly be
smaller and at a price.

Hello again ndj-ga, and thanks for clarifying your question so
promptly.

As I said earlier, there are a number of commercial services that can
provide much of the information you need.  In my experience, InfoUSA
is the most robust of the services available, in terms of the depth of
their lists and the flexibility with which they can provide different
"slices" of the data.  They advertise that their email lists include
more names "than all our competitors combined".  While I can't
personally vouch for that claim, it certainly does seem to me that
they are the industry leaders in this business.

To begin to explore your options, pay a visit to:

http://www.infousa.com/

or you can call them at:

(800) 321-0869

If you take the online route, look at item #2 on their homepage, which
says:

------------------

2. Consumer Sales Leads & Mailing Lists

--Over 200 million people in 104 million households. Hundreds of
selections: Income, Age, Gender, Geography, Home Value and more.

--14.5 Million Consumer Opt-In Email Addresses  

--Other Consumer Specialty Lists  

------------------

So there you have your basic parameters.  They have 200 million names
and addresses to offer, and 14.5 million email addresses.  These can
all be sorted in an infinite variety of ways.


Presuming your highest priority is the email list, clicking on the
"opt-in email" list link gets you to the following important message
from InfoUSA:

-------------------

All of our 14.5 million email addresses are opted-in, i.e., the
customer has elected to receive third party emails. Now you can select
by powerful demographics like age, income, home ownership etc.
Additionally, all records have a postal address and phone number, so
you can develop an integrated marketing campaign.

* Email addresses are never released and InfoUSA will do the email
blast on your behalf. Call us for details.

-------------------

It's that last little asterisked bit that I want to bring to your
attention -- InfoUSA will not provide you the actual email list. 
Instead, they do the mailing (or multiple mailings) for you.

Their site continues by stepping you through selection criteria.  I
suggest you go ahead with this step.  You can enter quite a bit of
detail before the system will ask you actually order your dataset. 
Even if you don't order, the process is quite instructive.  Their site
gives you the "three step" process:

-------------------

Follow 3 steps to find new prospects & grow your business: 
 Step 1: Start your selections.  
 Step 2: Order the list with your credit card on our secure site. 
 Step 3: Receive your list in real time via email or other popular
formats.

-------------------

The selections process is fairly straightforward.  You can pick a
geographical subset (state, city, zip code, county, etc), or just
ignore geography all together and get the entire nation by default.

You can also sort by other factors, such as:

--age (e.g. 18 and over, to get the potential voting population)

--income

--home ownership

--gender

--type of car driven

--marital status

--ethnicity

--number of children, pets, grandparents

--religion

--buying habits

--etc, etc.  The possibilities are almost endless.


I stepped through the process myself in the hopes of seeing the
pricing details for the full email dataset, with it's 14.5 million
listings.  The process ended with two options, both of which included
the email distribution, as well as a data download for a mailing list
-- one set with a lot of information, the second options with bare
bones information:

-----------------

Option 1: One Email Campaign + Complete Sales Leads Database
 
   InfoUSA will do the email campaign on your behalf 

  Data file includes Name, Address, City, State, ZIP+4, Phone Number,
Time Zone, County, Metro Area, Age, Gender, Income, Head of Household
Indicator, Carrier Route, Delivery Point and many records also
include: Purchasing Power Indicator, Housing Information, Nielsen
County Information, Mail Order History, Donor Type, Cat/Dog Owner,
Grandparent in Household, Veteran Present, Household with Internet
User, Female/Male Occupation.
 
Option 2: One Email Campaign + Direct Mail List

    InfoUSA will do the campaign on your behalf

  Data file includes Name, Address, City, State, ZIP+4, County, Metro
Area, Residence Type, Location Type, Number of Units, Carrier Route,
Delivery Point Bar Code.
 
-------------------

How much will all this cost you?  Ah...there's the rub.  InfoUSA will
give you online price information for small sets of data...say 10,000
names/addresses or so.  But for large sets that run into millions of
names, you have to call them directly for the information.  However, I
feel quite confident in saying that a list of millions of names will
likely run in the many thousands of dollars.

As I’ve said before, these lists do not come cheap.

I hope this is the information you need.  But if anything here is not
clear, or if you need additional information, just let me know by
posting a Request for Clarification, and I’ll be happy to assist you
further.

www.e-Merges.com has over 100 million voters and it is available on
2-3 DVD's and in a single format. You will need a tool like Access,
Visual FoxPro or MS SQL to sort and select from the data.

Some data is restricted to only permitted political uses and other
data has no regulations covering usage. email appends are availabel
but the fee is very steep and the emaisl are genrally low quality
becasue they are garnered from freebie sites