Votebuilder is the common name for the Voter Activation Network (VAN). It is a collaborative project between the Democratic National Committee, the Virginia Democratic Party, local party units, and Democratic campaigns in Virginia.
In recent years, Votebuilder has become the backbone of nearly every major Democratic campaign. In simple terms, it is an online database management program that allows campaigns to easily utilize the state voter records to mobilize Democratic voters and volunteers.
The default data in Votebuilder comes from voter registration records maintained by the Virginia Department of Elections. This includes name, address, home phone number, vote history, and more. There are also pieces of data that are provided by the Democratic Party, like scores and cell phone numbers. This part of Votebuilder is known as My Voters. Anyone who is a registered voter in Virginia will appear in the My Voters side of Votebuilder. As of 3/7/22, there are 9,706 registered voters in Madison County.
Everything else in Votebuilder is data that campaigns and local committees add to the system over the course of the cycle. One of the data sets unique to each campaign is the My Campaign part of Votebuilder. Whereas My Voters is based on information the Dept. of Elections provides, My Campaign is based purely on data that each individual campaign enters into the system. If a campaign is using Votebuilder for the first time there will not be any records in the My Campaign side of Votebuilder. Records must be added by the campaign itself.
