How many votes can my PC get me? From the monitor to the ballot box in a single click...

Campaigning is one of those tasks that computers have not managed to replace yet. Like it or not,  candidates must still go through the hard slog of visiting each district, city, town, and rural community one by one if they want to get elected. And woe be it should they forget to pay a call on each and every political leader, mayor, and local celebrity, current or past.

Nevertheless, computers do provide us with invaluable services. You know that any good candidate must have an amazing memory for names, faces and situations. Well, can you name a candidate who can boast of memorizing 100 Gigabytes of information? Or nor who can run a 512 megabyte RAM database? In this area,  PCs are unbeatable.

Election campaign software started off life, more than anything else, as databases with an interface adapted to campaign use. Some of the main programs for campaign use are derived directly from well-known database programs. The best example of this is Voter Access which, as its surname suggests, leaves no doubt as to the identity of its parent program.

This kind of software is mainly used to handle essential campaign information. Information obviously related to voters but also to fundraising sources and to internal organization.

As far as the voters are concerned, these programs sort them into groups and handle information to send out mailings and all kinds of direct mail contacts. Likewise, certain direct contact techniques, such as Canvassing, allow the database to be fed and built up by classifying voters according to their relative proximity to the candidate and by the probability that each voter will vote for our proposal or not.

As for fund raising, these programs manage existing lists of possible campaign contributors and help to avoid one of the most common and tragic errors found in campaign funding committees which is to ask for a thousand dollars from the contributor who can afford fifty thousand.

Each software application comes with very different options. Most are placed on the client’s computers, but some are web-based. There are programs for nationwide campaigns and other for local campaigns. Some programs combine databases with geographic, mapping software. Frequently they have e-marketing tools, like pre-designed campaign websites, letter templates, mailbombers etc.

There are programs to suit all budgets, from the odd freeware application to other options that cost several thousand dollars per license. They generally range between two and five hundred dollars. Nearly all the programs on offer are concentrated in the USA although there are a few manufacturers in Canada. Below you can find a list of the campaign software available on the market.

Campaign Commander: http://www.timelesstech.com

Win Campaign: http://www.win-campaign.com

Voter Access: http://www.politicaldata.com

Back Office: http://www.completecampaigns.com 

Elect: http://www.electinc.com

Trail Blazer: http://www.trailblz.com

Voter Track: http://www.votertrack.com

CamPane: http://www.votes4u.com

FILPAC: http://www.filpac.com

Digital Campaigns: http://www.digicamp.com

Best Vote: http://www.dotstar.net

Political Opsware: http://www.cubistix.com

Visteva e-Campaign: http://www.visteva.com

Campaign Catapult: http://www.campaigncatapult.com