[AccessD] Access vs. Excel - Oy!

Something to keep in mind when using data and addresses.
Just as an aside to this I remember researching the number of people who had
moved within a year in a major Canadian city by using GIS and tax roll 
assessment data.
I came up with around 30%.  This was disbelieved  by local  urban planners.
I reconfirmed the number by checking the number of Bell residential 
phone line
connects and disconnects. This was 30 years ago before the use of cell 
phones.
This number may vary by town size and country but is still substantial.

Steve Erbach wrote:

>Thanks.  Unfortunately it would be a story interesting only to people like us!
>
>The idea of a state-wide voter list isn't bad.  In the lists I got on
>Wednesday (since consolidated in Access into one list), there are
>about 1100 names of people whose address has changed since they voted.
> These 1100 people have moved out of the city of Neenah.  The state
>list shows their new addresses which is handy, when you think about
>it.  If I had gotten those four years of voter history from a
>Neenah-only database.  Those 1100 peoples' addresses would simply have
>been wrong and any mailings I did to them would bounce back or get
>forwarded, maybe.  In any event those names would be useless to me if
>I were trying to get them to vote for me.  They CAN'T vote in Neenah
>elections any longer.  At least with the state list I can see that
>they've moved and I can eliminate them from any mailings.
>
>Actually I'm now a bit confused.  Back in December when I sat with the
>City Clerk and looked at the on-line database system, I found that the
>names and addresses were stored in good form.   That is, the addresses
>were separated into Pre-Street-Direction, House Number, Street name,
>street type, Post-Street-Direction, unit number, unit type, etc.  This
>is what I'll have to do "manually" (with Access, thank god!) with the
>names I was given since the addresses are all in one field.  During my
>re-election campaign I made lists of voters by street and by house
>number so that I could move sequentially along a street and know which
>homes had voters in them.  The number of people who actually vote in a
>February primary election is minscule.  This is good since that was a
>damned cold month for door-knocking.  One wants to target one's
>door-knocking as much as possible.  That December list I extracted
>saved me a lot of work.
>
>Therefore, I have to assume that the City Clerk chose a pre-formatted
>report for the voter history I asked for...and that pre-formatted
>report had several export options, one being Excel.
>
>Looks like I'll have to do some more digging.  That is, find out more
>from the state elections board or whoever has control over the
>state-wide lists now.  It would be useful to know all the options one
>has for extracting data.  I'm not certain, though, if a regular
>citizen has access to the data.
>
>I'm just happy that I got these lists before the prices went up.  I
>miscounted: there were actually close to 53,000 records.  $25 setup +
>$5 per thousand equals $290 vs. the $15 I paid.  I guess I can put up
>with a bit of table manipulation and normalizing!
>
>
>Steve Erbach
>http://TheTownCrank.blogspot.com
>  
>

-- 
Marty Connelly
Victoria, B.C.
Canada