Voter Vault is the single greatest advancement in political technology since the personal computer.  In our view it is even more important than email and the Internet.   A candidate with access to the Voter Vault gains a trove of information -- data he couldn't hope to gather on his own -- that enables him to target his voter contacts, conserve resources and focus his message on those voters most likely to be moved.

Voter Vault is the recent name for the 20-year project of the Republican National Committee to produce an enhanced voter file.  

An enhanced voter file is one that is cross-matched with public and consumer information such as phone numbers, driver licenses, hunting and fishing licenses, veteran records, property records, census results, phone numbers and, in at least one state we've seen, the results of past telephone surveys, in addition to a run through the Postal Service's National Change of Address (NCOA) system.

The GOP candidate or local chairman is issued a user name and password that allows them to log into the voter vault website and access the registered voters in their county or district.  Once there they can look up individual voters, generate reports and download lists.

Here's why using Voter Vault with the Filpac system is so effective:

Unfortunately,  Voter Vault is updated only in even-numbered years, usually in late summer.  This means that the city council candidate in the fall of an odd-numbered year would be working from a voter file that is probably eighteen months old, which means he doesn't know who voted in last year's general election or who's recently registered.

However, the city council candidate using the Filpac system doesn't have that problem.  He can import the downloaded Voter Vault file into his master file, and then he can use his Filpac software to enhance the Voter Vault data with more recent information from the local election board!