How to Get the Illinois Voter File: What Only Your Committee Can Do

Illinois hands its voter data to committees. The Illinois State Board of Elections states the rule in one sentence: "Voter data is available to registered political committees for bona fide political purposes. Use for commercial solicitation or other business purposes is prohibited."

The word that trips up first-time campaigns is committee. It does not mean a party organization. A candidate committee qualifies, and the statute says so directly — 10 ILCS 5/4-8 requires an affidavit that the data "shall be used only for bona fide political purposes, including by or for candidates for office or incumbent office holders." The Board's own request form carries a signature line reading "Signature of Requestor (Candidate, Treasurer or Chair for Political Committee / Authorized signer for others)" and a committee ID field beside it.

So if your committee is registered, you can buy. What the process asks in return is that the committee do 4 specific things itself, none of which can be handed to anyone else.

4 steps only the committee can take

The application form, revised July 7, 2025, names each gate in turn

A staffer can fill in the form, a manager can chase the office, and a consultant can plan the whole field program around the result. The signature, the attestation, the payment, and the decryption stay with the committee. Sign, attest, and decrypt all belong to the person who signs, and the payment must come from the committee's own account — coordinate those people early, because the office publishes no turnaround (a point that matters further down).

The statute behind the rule is 10 ILCS 5/1A-25(b), which prohibits disclosure of the statewide registration list "to any person or entity other than to a State or local political committee and other than to a governmental entity for a governmental purpose." That is why Activate's Illinois voter file page records the state as restricted rather than as a file a platform can fetch on a campaign's behalf.

Price by the area you are actually running in, not by the state

The Board's fee schedule has been unchanged since it took effect on January 22, 2008:

A city-council campaign does not need the $500 statewide file. Read the schedule literally, because the named areas are literal: the $100 citywide row is the City of Chicago specifically, and a Chicago ward is not on the published list — ward-level scope falls under "Others" and starts a phone call to the Division of Voter Registration Services, (217) 782-4141, with a $25 minimum. For a Chicago campaign, the citywide file at $100 is usually the shorter path to a canvass. Outside Chicago, your city is not a named area either; the same "Others" row and the same call apply.

One line on the schedule is easy to misread. The Board also sells, for $50, "a data file containing only voting district information by registration address." That file contains no voter information at all. It is useful for working out which district an address sits in; it will not put anyone on a doorstep.

The affidavit is short, and the penalty behind it is not

Every committee request checks this box, quoted from the form

I hereby verify that the information shall be used only for bona fide political purposes. I also verify that this data shall not be used under any circumstances for purposes of commercial solicitation or other business purposes, and that to do so may result in substantial penalty, including, but not limited to, conviction of a class 4 felony.

The statute matches it. 10 ILCS 5/4-8 provides that the data "shall not be used under any circumstances by any political committee or individuals for purposes of commercial solicitation or other business purposes," and that "any person who violates this provision shall be guilty of a Class 4 felony."

Read the scope carefully, because it is wider than the phrase "commercial solicitation" on its own: Illinois prohibits other business purposes generally, not only sales contact aimed at the voters in the file. Four things are worth keeping distinct as a result. Who may acquire the file: a registered political committee, by statute. Who receives the password: the original requestor, by the form. What processing looks like: the committee's own campaign software — the Board's page provides files of voter data and notes that software to process them is bought separately. And what is not permitted: pointing the data at anything that is not the committee's own political work — commercial solicitation, any other business purpose, handing the file to a related organization, or moving it onto anyone else's list. The signer attests to the use, and that obligation is the committee's regardless of which tool the committee runs. Write that down as a rule for whoever handles the file, and make sure the volunteers who see walk lists on their phones know the list came with terms attached.

The submission path is email plus electronic payment

The current process is short, and it does not involve mailing anything

The form's instructions are explicit that "no application will be processed without payment" and that requests are handled "in the order they are received." There is no published turnaround, so ask when you submit rather than planning a canvass date against a guess. The Division of Voter Registration Services takes questions at (217) 782-4141.

Two things to expect. First, where to get the form and where it goes: download the "Application for Voter Information" from the Board's Computerized Voting Data page, and submit it by email to the address the form prints — [email protected] as of the July 2025 revision. The form itself refers to an online portal and then gives that email address as the route; in practice it is a PDF you download, complete, and email in. Second, a dating note on all of this: the Board's site was unreachable at our September 2026 check, so every operational detail here rests on dated evidence — the fee schedule and the page's rules on the page itself and its August 2026 archival capture, the submission route, payment, and password rules on the July 7, 2025 form, and the format details on the Board's formats page and that form. None of it is likely to move the way the 2025 form revision moved the submission route, but if anything has, (217) 782-4141 reaches the division that processes requests.

The separate $50 district-assignment file has its own one-page application, and per that form it still goes by mailed check or money order.

What arrives is encrypted, and the format choice matters

On the application you pick a file type and a format. File type is Committee/Government or Public — the Public type is the redacted file described below, ordered on the same application. Format is one of 4 on the form: preferred single-file with history, preferred single-file, normalized multi-table with history, or normalized multi-table. What those mean is simpler than the names. The single file combines voter data and participation history — up to the last 15 elections where available — into one table. The multi-table option splits voter data, subdivision data, and history into three files you join yourself, for campaigns with special processing requirements. Single-file arrives as Microsoft Access or comma-delimited text; multi-table is comma-delimited only. Date of birth is no longer provided in any of them.

For a canvassing operation, request the single file with history, and ask for the comma-delimited text form rather than the Access form. It is one table, it opens anywhere, and the participation history is what walk-list prioritization runs on. Comma-delimited text is also the form that matches Activate's upload picker, which accepts .csv, .xlsx, and .xls; Access is not one of them.

Every file is encrypted and password-protected, and the password goes only to the original requestor — the person who signed the application. That is a small logistics detail with real consequences: the signer has to be the one who opens the archive, so schedule that rather than discovering it on the night you meant to cut walk lists.

The public file exists, and it will not canvass

Illinois does publish a genuinely open version of the statewide list under 10 ILCS 5/1A-25(c), available to anyone except during the 27 days before an election. It is not a substitute. The Board's format documentation shows the public file blanks the house number, the telephone number, and address lines 2 and 3, and truncates email to 7 characters. An address without a house number cannot be walked, mailed, or routed. The subsection also confines that file's use to federal list-maintenance purposes and bars using the records for "the advertising, solicitation, sale, or marketing of products, services."

If a data source offers you an Illinois file that seems too open to be true, check whether the house number column is populated before you build anything on it.

Bringing the committee's file into the field

The archive that arrives is a container, not a data file. The committee member who holds the password opens it and extracts the comma-delimited text file inside — that file is the import. If it carries a .txt name, rename it to .csv before uploading; the contents are unchanged, and no spreadsheet round-trip is needed.

The import lives in the campaign's settings: upload the file, review the mapping, preview, then confirm. Mapping columns by hand is free. Preparing a new file shape — the first time a given column layout is mapped — carries a small processing charge, and the same layout is reused free for 7 days. Illinois splits street addresses across several columns, and the mapping step merges them back into a single address. Date of birth is not in the file because the state no longer provides it; registration date and participation history are, and columns you leave unmapped never become canvasser-facing fields. The voter list readiness checklist walks through which fields to keep.

Imported records are encrypted at rest, and a canvasser's app sees one decrypted record at a time — the door in front of them; list views return no bulk decrypted records, and a manager's export gives back your original source columns with Activate's canvassing activity appended. Activate does not sell voter data. Campaigns bring their own list, and it stays private — encrypted at rest, never sold or shared. The first 5,000 records in an import are stored free; a larger file is quoted before anything commits, and you see the cost before you confirm.

Illinois asks for a committee, a signature, and $25 to $500. The constraint is a calendar constraint more than a cost one. Start it the week you register the committee, not the week you want to knock. When the file lands, the 30-minute launch sequence picks up once your list is imported.

Sources

• Illinois State Board of Elections, "Computerized Voting Data" — eligibility statement, fee schedule, and the $50 district file.
• Illinois State Board of Elections, "Voter File Formats" — file types, formats, and the single-file/multi-table shapes.
• Illinois State Board of Elections, Request for Voter Information application form, revised July 7, 2025 — affidavit text, signature line, payment and password rules, and the submission route.
• 10 ILCS 5/1A-25(b) and (c); 10 ILCS 5/4-8, 5/5-7, and 5/6-35 — disclosure limits, the affidavit requirement, the Class 4 felony provision, and the parallel disclosure provisions for the other registration authorities.