We're doing a petition drive and I've been handed the list of invalid signatures generated from a lookup against the voter reg list. The valid signatures matched the voter reg list exactly. Some signatures from the invalid list may be valid but have a different First name, Last name or Address and I am trying to find these. The invalid list has 1300 records and the voter reg list has 79000.

The invalid list contains fields labeled:

Sheet ID

Signature number

Lname DYER

Fname ADRIAN

Mname

Address 1120 3RD ST NW

Apt

City

Zip Code

The voter reg list contains 27 fields but I only need to search Lname, Fname and Address for any close match (all ADRIANs, all DYERs, and all 1120 3RD ST NWs) and have these display to see if the signature may be valid.

Is there an easy way to script this?

I would also like to run the script against a Polk directory list (130,000 records) if they don't turn up in the voter reg list.

I've been using Filemaker since version 3 but only for invoicing.

Ross

FileMaker Version: 7

Platform: Mac OS X Jaguar

Ross->

Welcome to FM Forums!

Using FM7 makes this is a lot easier than in earlier versions. One way is to define a relationship between the voter reg table and the invalid list table. In that relationship, link the Lname, Fname and Address fields with the default match ( = ). To see if there is a match, in the invalid list table define a calculation Count(theRelationship::AnyField), it will return the # of matches. Then do a Find on this calculation field for >0 to see any matches.

The disadvantage of this method is that it won't catch a typo like DYERr, dDYER, or DYyER. If you need to see non-exact matches like these, the easiest way is to do scripted Finds. This is a more daunting task, since you'll have to do a search on every entry in the invalid list. If you need to do this, let us know, it'll take more brainpower than my organic cpu has this late at night...

Sam

Sam,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I would like to set up a scripted find for non-exact matches for these 3 fields and search every entry. Our group paid $3.50 per signature, valid and invalid, so I am willing to go through every one before we turn them in to the county clerk. I appreciate your willingness to help me through this.

Ross

Ross->

I was going to tell you how to do it when I realized I wasn't up to speed enough to shoot off my mouth without checking... Good thing I did, I just learned a lot about FM7.

I've attached a sample that will do the search, etc. It only looks a last name match, adding other search parameters are relatively trivial.

Let me know if the methodology is clear & if it works for you!

Voters.zip