Free Your Right Campaign GOTV plugin for WordPress

Voter data can come from many sources, including your state, county or city election authority, your local political party or from other sources.  This plugin does not provide any voter data, instead you need to bring your own in CSV format.

You can import voter data from the Your Right Campaign GOTV > Import Voters menu. You will need to have your voter data in a CSV file.

Once you upload your voter data CSV, you will be asked to map your CSV’s fields to the internal fields used by the Your Right Campaign plugin. The first name, last name, address, city and zip (postal) code fields are required. In addition, you can map other data such as voter phone, email, precinct code, external voter id and more to the internal fields provided by the Your Right Campaign plugin.

Once you have mapped your fields, the plugin will begin importing your CSV file data. This process is pretty quick, with the plugin being able to import a test file containing 65,000 records in about five minutes.

No!  The plugin does not set any limits on the amount of voter records you can import.  The only limitation is based on your allowed database size and the maximum file size that you can upload.  These values are usually determined by your web host and most web hosts should allow your campaign enough space where you will never run into any limit on how much voter data you can store.

To add volunteers to your campaign, they first must have a WordPress user account. If your site does not allow open registrations, create a user for each volunteer under the `Users` section of WordPress.

For each user, assign them a GOTV related role.

• The GOTV Volunteer role is allowed to view voter data, as well as edit voter data for any voter who is assigned to one of their walklists.
• The GOTV Manager role can view and edit any voter, as well as create walklists, assign volunteers to walklists and import voter data.
• The GOTV Administrator role is allowed to access all voter data as well as all settings for the Your Right Campaign GOTV plugin.

These roles cannot edit other parts of your WordPress website, such as your posts or content. If you need to allow a user to edit your website content and GOTV data, you may need to install a plugin that allows for multiple usergroups in WordPress. Additionally, site administrators always have access to all GOTV settings and voter data.

Once your volunteers have an account, you need to add them to a walklist. Go to Your Right Campaign GOTV > Walk Lists and create a walk list. Then select any volunteers who you want to have access to that walk list.

Once your volunteers log into WordPress, guide them to your volunteer portal so they can begin walking their lists. By default, the portal lives at yourdomain.com/volunteer-portal but this URL can be changed under Your Right Campaign GOTV > Settings.

A walklist is a list of voter names and addresses that your campaign volunteers will walk by going door-to-door.  The walklist is a key tool in political campaigns and allows your campaign to directly engage with voters, solicit support and ultimately encourage potential voters to vote either by mail or in person.

The Your Right Campaign plugin for WordPress helps your campaign staff and volunteers easily create walklists and assign a specific walk list to a specific volunteer.  Volunteers can then record their interactions with a voter in the voter database, logging whether a voter is supportive of your campaign, whether they have requested or received a mail in ballot and any custom comments or notes that the volunteer may have for a particular voter.

First, ensure that you have created at least one walk list under Your Right Campaign GOTV > Walk Lists. Then search for voters who belong on the list by going to Your Right Campaign GOTV > Search Voters. Enter your search criteria and then select the box on the left next to any voters you wish to add to the walk list. Under the Bulk Actions drop down select the Assign to Walklist option and click Apply.

On the next screen, select the walk list that these voters should belong to. Once you save, you can click the link at the top to view your walk list.

Once you’ve created your walklist, you then need to set the order in which your volunteers will walk the list. It’s best to group close addresses together to aid your volunteers in physically walking from home to home.

Within your newly created walklist, scroll to the Walk List Voters section and ensure it is expanded. Then use the order column to change the order voters appear on your volunteer’s walklist. You can also remove a voter from the walklist by checking the corresponding checkbox on the remove column.

When done updating your walklist, save the walklist using the Update button.

If you’re Canadian, yes!  While this plugin was primarily designed for US elections, it will also work for Canadian elections as well.

Simply set your country to Canada under Your Right Campaign GOTV > Settings and the plugin will use Canadian-specific terms like “province” instead of “state” as well as show different early voting options that are more in-line with Canadian elections.

This plugin was not intended for use in elections in countries other than the United States and Canada.

Voter data is stored within the plugin in custom database tables, created when the plugin is installed.  Access to voter data is restricted within WordPress to only users you have designated access to.

Users who have the GOTV Volunteer user role have access to view voter data, as well as edit voter data for voters on their walklists.  Users with the GOTV Manager and GOTV Administrator roles, as well as any site administrators, have full access to view and edit any voter record.

Certain voter data, including voter addresses and contact details are encrypted inside of your database.  When you install the plugin, an encryption key and salt will automatically be created and stored inside of your database.  In addition to data encryption, blind hashing is used on some fields to aid in searching for voter data from the voter search interface.

For extra security, you can create an encryption key in your wp-config.php file using the GOTV_ENCRYPTION_KEY constant, along with a salt using the GOTV_HMAC_SALT constant.

For the highest level of security, your encryption key and salt should be a 32 byte binary key consisting of 64 characters.  You can generate such a key from a PHP command line using the following command:

php -r "echo bin2hex(random_bytes(32)) . PHP_EOL;"

Inside of your wp-config.php file your encryption key and salt should look like this:

define( 'GOTV_ENCRYPTION_KEY', '67229b55f6f9e62763d492b16d52ea66922022ef36dd50d5495c1a1b9cef2b72' );
define( 'GOTV_HMAC_SALT', '75c6b8af78d21a84a06b154ffae1d3c60b3e5502aa1864f5b5c208be4ed02f8b' );

While the encryption provided by the plugin will accept any string for the encryption key and salt, using a compatible string generated by the command above will be the most secure option for encrypting voter data.

Do not lose your encryption key.  Loss of your encryption key may result in an inability to decrypt voter data!

For additional help using this plugin, please refer to the Your Right Campaign GOTV plugin manual.  This manual is currently under construction, so not all sections may be complete.  Please be patient as we build out the plugin manual.

If you have additional questions about using this plugin, you may contact us or post a help request on the WordPress.org support forums.  We will offer free plugin support as we see fit and as time permits.  We also offer paid website and plugin support and paid custom plugin development services.

For any security related concerns, security issues or bug discoveries, please use our contact form to get in touch.