Maptitude P&E Tech Corner

Synchronizing Street Names on the Map with Voter Addresses in Your Voter Registration Software

When Maptitude P&E locates voters in your VR file on the map, there is usually a small percentage of voters with addresses not found on the map. Either the streets are missing or there is a discrepancy in the names used in the two files. You need to decide which names are correct and modify them accordingly. This month's Tech Tip explains how to display and analyze the list of problem names.

First, recreate the list of voters that were not located on the map:

1. Choose P&E Mgt-Precinct Map to display the precinct map.
2. Choose P&E Mgt-Voter Dataview to display the entire list of voters.
3. Choose Selection-Select by Condition to display the Select by Condition dialog box.
4. Enter the condition "Located <> 1", where "Located" is the field you identified in the Voters tab of the P&E Mgt Settings dialog box. When Maptitude P&E successfully geocodes a voter (i.e., finds the voter's address on the map), it puts a "1" in this field. The condition you entered finds all voters whose located field is not equal to "1"

Maptitude P&E displays just the voters that have not been located on the map.

Next, modify the problem names in the street layer or in the VR file:

You need to decide which names don't match and whether you want to change a particular name in the street layer or in the VR file. Hopefully, there won't be too many names, and the solution will be obvious. Oftentimes, the street name is not spelled correctly or one file uses a space and the other uses a dash. The first thing to do is to sort the list of voters that have not been located by their street name and to sort the list of street segments, also by street name.

1. Using the mouse, right-click the column containing the street name in the list of voters.
2. Choose Sort-Increasing. Maptitude P&E sorts the voters by street name.
3. In the drop-down list on the Maptitude toolbar, change the Working Layer to Streets.
4. Click the New Dataview button to the right of the drop-down list to display the list of all the street segments.
5. Right-click the column containing the street name in the list of streets.
6. Choose Sort-Increasing. Maptitude P&E sorts the streets by street name.
7. Scroll the list (or choose Edit-Find) to display the street segment(s) in question.
8. Make any necessary edits to either the address in the VR file or the name and address ranges in the street file.

Once you have made the changes, choose P&E Mgt-Locate Voters to locate the voters for whom you have made changes.

 

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