Electoral-Management-Reference-Model-v.1.0

In addition to the sources mentioned above, Elections Canada is working with a few federal
agencies to allow individuals to consent to share their name, address and date of birth
information with Elections Canada when they complete forms for other purposes. Currently,
there are active consent sections on Canadian tax forms, Citizenship and Immigration
applications and Canada Post’s National Change of Address form. The only secondary source
from which new registrations can be directly processed is other electoral agencies with
overlapping jurisdictions. New registrations may be added to the National Register of Electors
from information provided by Canada Revenue Agency or Citizenship and Immigration Canada,
but not before individuals are contacted directly by Elections Canada.
Variations among agencies and data providers in database structure and variable definitions
mean that data need to be transformed prior to integration into the register to ensure consistent
definitions. This is the focus of the Secondary Source Registration business processes –
transforming electronic data from a variety of sources into a format that can be received by the
Register Maintenance processes for application to the register. Data standards are important to
streamlining the sharing of elector information among agencies. The Common Data Model is an
example of efforts on the part of electoral agencies to create standards around the definition of
elector data that will facilitate sharing.
Destinations
As illustrated in Figure 9, there are two destinations for the outputs of Secondary Source
Registration: Register Maintenance and Electoral Geography. Register Maintenance business
processes (described in section 4.3.2.3, below) integrate the data from secondary sources into the
register of electors and apply appropriate transactions. Addresses provided by secondary sources
are sent to the Electoral Geography business area for geo-coding and assignment to an electoral
district and polling division.
4.3.2.3 Register Maintenance
Register Maintenance involves integrating or merging new data into the register of electors,
identifying and applying appropriate transactions (e.g., adding new registrations, updating
existing registrations and removing electors), and maintaining the integrity of register data
through data maintenance processes and elector mailings. Register Maintenance processes also
receive information from Electoral Geography about electors with unresolved addresses and the
electoral and polling division assignments for elector addresses.
Figure 10 summarizes the inputs, and the output and its destination for Register Maintenance
business processes.
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April 9, 2010