MDP Help Desk

Michigan VAN Newsletter - AV Data in VAN

Good afternoon VAN users,

Tomorrow is the first official day of Fall, but it feels like it’s already here with temperatures dropping, leaves changing, and absentee ballots arriving in mailboxes. I just requested mine yesterday and you should too if you haven’t already.

We have just a couple quick updates for you today around absentee voting data.

Daily AV Data

Starting this week, we are uploading Absentee Voting Data from the Secretary of State every business day that the SoS office is open through election day. This file contains all AV ballots requested, mailed, and returned statewide from municipalities that are holding elections this November. This data typically hits VAN 10-11am.

Early Vote Data in Create a List

You can use early vote data in your lists to target people with absentee ballots, remove people who have already voted, or any other criteria you want to use with early vote data. Application Returned, Ballot Sent, and Ballot Returned are all available under the “Early Voting” section of Create a List.



Please note that the specific date a ballot was sent/received do depend on human data entry, so it’s not unusual to see some dates that fall outside of the normal range, or even this century. This does not mean that the file is inaccurate, just that one person made a typo somewhere when entering data.

Early Vote Data in miniVAN/Phone Banks

You can also display early vote information, such as whether someone has a ballot, for your volunteers in miniVAN and virtual phone banks.

To display early voting information in miniVAN, create a new miniVAN format. Under person fields, you can add “Ballot Mailed” and “Ballot Returned.”



You can display absentee ballot status in your Virtual Phone Bank. On the setting page of your VPB, go to the Contact & Location Information section in the right hand column and select the box for “Voted Status”:



You can also exclude voters who have already returned their absentee ballots when setting up Virtual Phone Banks or printing lists for MiniVAN by checking the box to exclude anyone who has early voted or absentee voted on the set up page:



And with that, happy campaigning and happy fall!

All the best,
The MDP Data Team