Searching Effectively
...by searching via addresses.
To be as quick as possible, always search by address and municipality first. They are likely more legible than the handwritten name.
Correctly searching for an address and municipality yields all residents at the address.
Pass 1: The AI's interpretation of the address and municipality will automatically be searched in the search box in an attempt to speed up the process for you. But sometimes, the address and/or municipality are misinterpreted by the AI, meaning you have to edit it and search again.
Above, the AI's interpretation was correct at reading the address and municipality. This is rare, unless the handwriting is neat, like it is in this example.
When the address and municipality are read correctly, the voters are presented immediately and you don't need to make any changes to the search.
But what if the AI's interpretation of the address and/or municipality is inaccurate?
Can you read the written address?
The AI often misinterprets the address. Above, the AI misinterpreted "76" to be "176," causing no correct results to appear.
If you can read the written address, edit or rewrite the AI interpretation to reflect the correct address.
What if you can't read the written address?
If you can't read the full written address with enough certainty, use the Google method to instantly find out the correct address.
the Google method: simply Googling what you can interpret from the written address + municipality in an attempt to find the correct result
Open a new Google search tab, or ideally keep one open on a second monitor, and search for what you think the address says, along with the town name.
If you're misreading the handwriting, Google will often autocorrect or suggest the correct street name with its own AI correction or Zillow listings. Once you find it, use that corrected version in your search.
Neither myself nor the AI can interpret what that address says.
Here's my best guess: "10 Wapanerg Dr, Franklin"
Let me search for it on Google:
Woah, that result looks like what the signer was trying to write. Let's try it.
It's a success - we found a match! The Google method reigns supreme. Use it anytime you cannot confidently read every single character of an address. There's a chance you're misspelling it.
The address isn't coming up in the results!
There will still be times when no voters at the desired address appear at all, meaning there may be an issue with the way you're searching for the address. This is because almost every address has at least one registered voter residing there, so if there are no voters at an address, something is likely going wrong.
If other voters appear in the search results as living at the address you're searching for, but you cannot find the voter, than they are likely just not registered to vote and thus not showing up in the database. This is normal.
Let's walk through some scenarios:
If even one character in the address or town is incorrect or missing, it can cause the proper address to not appear. It is absolutely imperative that you spell the address correctly. Double check your spelling.
If an address is legible but still not appearing in the results, look it up on Google regardless. The signer could have made a spelling error, causing the correct address to not appear.
In this example, a signer very legibly wrote that they lived on "Country Side Rd," but it yielded no results. Upon Googling the address and town, the correct street name was "Countryside Rd." A singular space can be the difference between finding a match and not finding a match.
The street suffix (Street, Road, Lane, Avenue, Way, Circle, Crossing, Place, etc.) is usually abbreviated in the database, so you need to abbreviate the suffix correctly to higher the chances of finding the correct address. Here are a few of the most common street suffixes and their abbreviations:
Avenue - AVE
Boulevard - BLVD
Center - CTR
Circle - CIR
Court - CT
Drive - DR
Expressway - EXPY
Heights - HTS
Highway - HWY
Lane - LN
Park - PK
Parkway - PKWY
Place - PL
Road - RD
Route - RT
Square - SQ
Street - ST
Terrace - TER
Village - VLG
Way - WAY
The AI correctly interprets the handwritten municipality name most of the time, but double-check it in the event that the municipality was misinterpreted. Searching for the correct address in the wrong municipality will severely hinder your chances of making the correct match.
Sometimes, a neighborhood of a municipality is written at the bottom of the sheet instead of the municipality's official name.
Villages
In Massachusetts, there are many "villages" within towns. For example, the town of Billerica, MA, has a village called Pinehurst. In some instances, a sheet will have "Pinehurst" written at the bottom of it where the municipality should go. Pinehurst will not show up in the searchbox because it is not a real town.
If you suspect a town is really a village, then look at the following link for a list of all municipalities in the state. If it is not in this list, then it is likely a village.
https://www.mass.gov/lists/massachusetts-city-and-town-websites
Or, just simply Google the town name followed by "MA." The first result will tell you whether it's a village of another town or not.
The address still isn't coming up in the results!
You've ran through all of the above options: you Googled the address, you used the correct suffix, you ensured there were no spelling errors in the search, but you still can't find any results that contain the correct address.
Sometimes, this happens. There are rare cases where no one is registered to vote at an address, but they signed a petition anyways.
However, the last thing that would make a potential match appear, is by searching for the name of the voter in front of the address.
If you've tried this and no results appear, you can safely mark that signature as invalid.
Edge cases
Apartment complexes
Apartment complexes will yield hundreds of residents, making it hard to find a specific person.
If a signer has included their apartment number, append it in-between the street name and municipality name.
Template: {address} {apartment number} {municipality}
Ex: "188 main st 205 wilmington"
If the signer did not include their apartment number, append their name to the beginning of the search, in front of the address, to increase the chances of the voter appearing.
Street names that are numbers
Sometimes if a street name is a number, spell it out. They can only be found in the database if they're fully spelled.
Why is this signature crossed out?
Sometimes, people cross out their information after signing a sheet. Our AI cannot detect if a signature is crossed out and still presents it to you for validation. Press the red trashcan icon to delete these types of signatures.
Why am I looking at a blank row?
Sometimes our system detects blank row with no signature in them.
This means that you may be presented with a row that was detected as containing handwriting, but in reality, it was just a stray mark(s) that overlapped from the rows above or below the row in question.
In these cases, please click the red Trash button to mark the row for deletion. You may see a name get printed by the AI, but this is just our system's way of putting filler information instead of leaving it blank.
Remember to doublecheck the Current Row field located at the top right to make sure the row you are looking at is truly blank.
In the above example, the row in question is 14 and row 14 is blank, so it should be deleted.
In the above example, the row in question is 2 and row 2 is blank, so it should be deleted.
Splicing errors
In incredibly rare scenarios, you may be presented with the wrong row.
In this case, look at both the AI's interpretation of the row and the Current Row field to determine which row to validate. Then, you'd try to validate the signature in that row by looking at the full page on the right.
You can utilize the AI results and the current row indicator to help you navigate through splicing issues.
Signatures across two rows
Sometimes, signers sign their name and address across multiple rows. They may put their signature and address in the first row with their printed name below, or their signatures and printed name in the first row with their address below, etc.
Only one of these two rows should be validated as the voter. It should always be the row with the signature in it. This is incredibly important.
In the following example, the first row should be validated as the correct voter because it contains the signature while the second row, which contains just her printed name, should be deleted.
If you're only being presented with the row that doesn't contain the signature and not the row with the signature, this means that the row with the signature was already autovalidated or validated by a validator of a previous pass (if you're doing Pass 2.1) as the correct voter. In this case, delete the row with less information.
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