Liberalist FAQ English

Click here to see the Liberalist User Agreement form and fill it out .

Your riding president, certified candidate, official agent or a Liberal Party of Canada staff member will be asked to approve your application. For more information, see How to request an account.

Liberalist administrators are committed to protect the confidentiality of the personal information contained within the database and to assist our users in utilizing the tools available on Liberalist to their fullest potential. When submitting a request, please detail the reason for which you would like to export data from Liberalist so that our team can review your request efficiently. We recommend requesting your export 24 hours before it is needed whenever possible.

Liberalist is our campaign voter information management system. CRM is the tool Liberal Members' staff uses to manage communications with constituents. Partisan data and functions such as Virtual Phone Banking are made available through a Liberalist account (firstname_lastname). Constituency support activities like Casework can only be accessed with a CRM account (firstname.lastname).

Voter Activation Network, the creators of Liberalist, have a proven track record of keeping data safe, secure and private through several election cycles - including the 2008 cycle, when it was used extensively by the then-rival Obama and Clinton campaigns in every single Democratic primary contest without any data integrity issues. Clients also include many organizations concerned with membership data privacy, particularly the AFL-CIO, the first time its political organizing membership data was supported by an outside company.

Liberalist's servers are located on the island of Montréal, and have a back-up system in triplicate so should any unlikely event occur, the entire database can be restored up to a day, two days, four days and as far back as four weeks.

If you are looking for the results from previous elections to target specific voters and want to see the election results, visit the Elections Canada website and search for past election results by the name of your riding or the candidate during those elections.

If you are looking for a detailed map of your electoral district and polling divisions, you can request them from Elections Canada by calling 1-800-463-6868.

Liberalist only contains information that has been collected by the Liberal Party of Canada. Demographic information that has been entered in ManageElect or Liberalist can be found by creating a list with the demographic criteria like age or activist codes relating to cultural background or language. If you are looking for demographic information that has not already been obtained through canvassing, you can obtain all available demographic information about your electoral district by consulting the census on the Statistics Canada website.

It is very likely that the print set up was not configured properly before you printed the barcodes. When you print a list it is always important to check the page set up to see that there are no footers or headers, format portrait and that the margins are .25 inches (6.35 millimeters). Also, you should check under Print Preview that your print size is set up for 100% and not shrink-to-fit. If you are still unable to read your bar codes, it is very likely that the print quality of your printer does not have a high resolution to print the codes. Laser printers have a higher print quality than Inkjet. Try sending your list to a different printer. Be sure to check all the same print set up before printing your canvass sheets.

If you would like to further refine your search you can, Add People, Remove People or Narrow People.
Once you have created your initial list you can refine the list by keeping only a certain people from your initial search. To keep only the individuals that correspond to a new search on your list, click Narrow People, then enter the new criteria and click Search.
To remove people off your most recent list, click on Remove People. Now add the new search criteria for the individuals you would like to remove from your list and then click Search.
To add people onto your most recent list that did not correspond to your previous search criteria, click on Add People then select the criteria for the individuals that you would like to have added onto your list. Then, click search.
You can continue refining your list using the Add People, Remove People and Narrow People functions until you are satisfied with your final list. See Saving My List to find out how to keep this list for future reference.

No. The training schedule is available here and anyone can register provided they provide the necessary information for registration. This is a great way to encourage your volunteers to sign up for Liberalist as our training sessions will show them some of the concrete actions they can take for your campaign team.

You can log onto Liberalist and use the Quick Look Up function to look at individual records on your blackberry.  It is also possible to add voter information on E-day.  Liberalist is supported by Internet Explorer and Firefox on PCs and/or Macs.

The Electoral List is updated by elections Canada every November 15th, 72 hours after the writ drops and 72 hours after receiving updates during the Electoral Period.

During the election period, the costs of accessing Liberalist will be included with the riding services package.

This depends on what your role is on the campaign.

If you are a candidate, campaign manager, technology administrator or an organiser (volunteer coordinator, canvass chair, etc), then you will require a Level 3 account.

If you are a local campaign office worker, receptionist, correspondence writer, a candidate’s personal assistant or frequent volunteer, you will require a Level 2 account.

If you are a canvasser, data enterer, phone banker or are new to the campaign, you will require a Level 1 account. For more information on the account request process, see How to request an account.

You have to wait until either your Riding President or Candidate has validated you. If you have not received an email confirmation from us in the 72 hours after they validated you, check your e-mail’s junk mail folder, as your spam filter settings may have flagged the e-mail as spam.  If you still cannot find the confirmation, send an e-mail to assistance@liberal.ca or call 1 866 574 5131 for further assistance.

Scroll to the very bottom of the e-mail and try manually cutting and pasting the link into the address field of your web browser.  If that does not work, e-mail assistance@liberal.ca or call 1 866 574 5131 for further assistance

My Voters, also called the voterfile, contains the complete Elections Canada list of all registered voters in your riding. The voterfile is used to create lists of voters and to capture information about voters.

Shared Contacts contains anyone you, your campaign, or other campaigns add to this section. They do not have to be a registered voter, nor do they have to be a resident of your riding. Shared Contacts is used to house information about volunteers, activists, supporters, donors, staff and anyone who wants you to communicate with them from around the country. It is here that you reach out to your volunteers and manage your campaign’s activities.

You will need a computer and an Internet connection.  Liberalist is web-based, so you do not need to download any database software.  However, only Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox 3.0 are supported browsers.  Liberalist will not run effectively using either Safari or Chrome.  You can download Firefox here.

If you plan on printing canvass sheets, you will need a laser printer (NOT inkjet). You may also wish to purchase a barcode scanner, although this is optional.  If you use dial-up or live in a rural area, check to make sure that the Internet accelerator function is turned off when printing.  Internet acceleration compresses web graphics to improve the connection speed, but this can render the barcodes unreadable.

Yes, you may use an Apple computer.  However, you will need to use Firefox instead of Safari as your browser when you print.

If you have already set-up your account, simply visit http://my.liberalist.ca and enter your username (first_lastname) and then your password.

Visit http://my.liberalist.ca/ForgotPasswordWizard.aspx and follow the instructions.  Remember your username is firstname_lastname. If that does not work, send an e-mail to assistance@liberal.ca or call 1 866 574 5131 for further assistance.

You will be able to find the date and time of the next training  here.  Virtual trainings are conducted regularly in both official languages and at varying times to accommodate the different regions.

If you used ManageElect in previous campaigns, yes, our data has already been shared with Liberalist.  However, if you used a different data management system, e-mail assistance@liberal.ca or call 1 866 574 5131 for further assistance with adding your data to Liberalist.

Activist Codes (ACs) allow you to ‘tag’ information about voters and further develop the profile of any given individual. Activist codes help describe a voter based on factors such as language preference, cultural background, occupation, etc. Applying activist codes to voters will help you later on when you want to begin more targeted messaging or pull lists of particular demographics or constituencies. For more information on activist codes, click here.

No, all activist codes are created and managed centrally.  This is to maintain consistency and data integrity over the long-term.  If you cannot find an activist code you feel you need, you can request to have that activist code created by e-mailing assistance@liberal.ca , by calling 1 866 574 5131 or  by submitting a support request here.

If you used ManageElect in previous campaigns, you can find your old sign lists in archived Activist Codes.  For more information see Creating a List on Liberalist.

If you used ManageElect in previous campaigns, you can find your old volunteer lists in archived Activist Codes. For more information on creating a list, click here.

You will need to use the reports button in the menu bar in My List. For step by step instructions on printing a canvassing sheet, click here.

Data follows individual voters with their VAN ID regardless of where they move because Liberalist is a person-centric data management system. The ‘Poll 999’ found in ManageElect is no longer necessary.

You can request an export in the menu bar in My List.  You will be prompted to provide a summary of the use of this export and the criteria of your search will be reviewed before approval. However, for canvassing, phone banks, volunteer and sign lists, events and mailing lists, you can use Liberalist to perform most functions without having to leave the system. E-mail assistance@liberal.ca or call 1 866 574 5131 for further assistance.

No. Due to membership rules outlined in the current Liberal Party constitution, you are not allowed to export any membership information.

All data from ManageElect has been shared with Liberalist.  If you cannot find particular information that you believe was held in ManageElect, or if you used a different data management system, e-mail assistance@liberal.ca or call 1 866 574 5131 for further assistance.

To request a parliamentary account for casework, constituency communications and parliamentary business, contact Tim Calder, Support Agent (Liberal CRM) at caldet@parl.gc.ca.

The Liberal Party is undergoing a period of renewal to make the party more accessible to the grassroots.  We want as many grassroots members as possible to have an opportunity to learn how to use Liberalist to ensure that our local campaigns can prepare themselves well in advance of an election. Rest assured, nothing contained in the publicly accessible support material is considered sensitive.

Yes, all of your updates and data from previous campaigns is accessible to you.

A barcode scanner is optional, but strongly recommended. To purchase a handheld barcode scanner, you can contact Extreme Barcode at 1.866.398.7227 or by e-mail at marvin@extremebarcode.com and request the Metrologic MS5145 with USB interface at a price of  $117.00 CAN.

For step by step instructions of using a barcode reader, click here.

Liberalist contains only information collected by the Liberal Party of Canada for federal purposes.  Contact your provincial party for all enquires regarding access to provincial voter file systems.

E-mail assistance@liberal.ca or call 1 866 574 5131 for further assistance.  Our hours are 9h to 17h EST, Monday to Friday.

Membership data currently is updated in Liberalist frequently.  However, for the most up-to-date membership, request a list of your members from your provincial or territorial association.  You can find your PTA’s contact information under the "Liberal Party" drop-down menu here.

Click on Create a List under either My Voters or Shared Contacts to generate a list of either voters or contacts. Enter the parameters for your list and click search to generate your results on the My List page. Within the toolbar on the My List page, click on the Export button. Enter a title and description of your export request. Select the date that you require your export. Click Submit

When an export is approved it can be found in the administrative options on the left hand side of the Main Menu under My Requests. Your export may be on either the My Voters or the Shared Contacts side of the application depending on which tab you were using when you requested the export. Click on My Requests and then click on Download beside the name of the list you would like to export. This will prompt you to select the fields that you would like to appear in your export. Here you can choose to download the file in several different formats. It may take a few moments to generate the report. To download the information, return to the main menu and from the administrative options on the left hand side, click on My Export Files. Click on download file beside the name of the list you created when downloading your request.

Click on Create a List under either My Voters or Shared Contacts to generate a list of either voters or contacts. Enter the parameters for your list and click search to generate your results on the My List page. From the My List page click on Narrow People in the menu bar. This will bring you to a page that looks similar to the Create a List page but is titled Narrow My List. To keep only the individuals that have e-mail address, open the field Phones • Emails by clicking the + sign, check the Emails only box and click Search. On the My List page you will see all the individuals from your initial search that also have email addresses. Within the toolbar on the My List page, click on the Export button. Enter a title and description of your export request. Select the date that you require your export. Click Submit

When an export is approved it can be found in the administrative options on the left hand side of the Main Menu under My Requests. Your export may be on either the My Voters or the Shared Contacts side of the application depending on which tab you were using when you requested the export. Click on My Requests and then click on Download beside the name of the list you would like to export. This will prompt you to select the fields that you would like to appear in your export. Here you can choose to download the file in several different formats. If you wish to copy and paste your list into an email, select email blob. Click Select All to highlight all of the emails and then Ctrl C to copy them. Enter Ctrl V to paste the emails into the appropriate field of your email messaging program. When sending out mass emails, it is always best to copy and paste this email blob into the bcc field of your email so that all the email addresses are not accessible to the end recipients.

By saving a Saved List (Fixed set of Voters) you are preserving a list of the particular people on your list. Once you have saved the list, you can open it again by selecting the name of the list in View My Folders.  If you want to always have an updated version of your list based on your search criteria you have selected, click Save Search (Dynamic set of search criteria). Once you have saved your search, you can load your list by selecting the name of your search in View My Folders and Liberalist will rerun your search criteria.

You may save the same list as a dynamic search and a fixed list. Most lists you will likely prefer to save as a dynamic search so that you can rerun your search criteria and receive updates according to all available information. Sometimes you may want to save a list as a fixed set of voters so that you can refer to the saved list at a later time according to the information available on the day you saved it. Another advantage of a fixed list is that you may use the My Saved Lists section on the Create a List/Narrow My List/Remove People from My List/ Add People to My List page. This tool helps you include any fixed saved list in the search criteria you use to create a new list or search.

Click "My profile" in Liberalist and enter your first, last name and your full address. Ensure that your email address is correct as this is what will be used to reset your password in cases where you have forgotten or compromised your password. We strongly recommend including at least one phone number in your profile. The Liberal Party of Canada Help Centre operators will often use this number to more efficiently respond to your Support Requests. Click Save.