In Minnesota, landlords are required to let campaigns into apartment buildings if a candidate is involved with the canvass event (https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/211B.20). If you are doing an apartment canvass, it is best practice to give the landlord or property manager a 48-hour heads up, to make sure you can get access to the building.



If you want to knock or mail voters in a specific apartment building, here is how to get a list. Before you start, you will need the following:



In this example, we are using the Iowa High Rise apartment building as an example. Its address is 1743 Iowa Ave E, which is in St. Paul Ward 6 Precinct 10.



Step One

Go to "Create a List" in VAN. We will be using the Home Districts filter for this task. 



DO NOT use the Addresses filter; the Addresses filter handles mailing addresses, while Home Districts handles voting addresses. Using Addresses instead of Home Districts will result in a smaller, incomplete list of voters.





Step Two

Select the County that your building is in. Then, you will have the option to select the precinct. Select the precinct your building is in.





Step Three

After you select a precinct, the "Street Name" link will appear. Click on it. 



Step Four

Check the box next to the street name that your building is on, then select "Save."



Step Five

Run your search and go to Turf Cutter. 


Step Six

From Turf Cutter, click on the dots to find the correct address for the building. This will take some patience! In suburban or rural areas, the dots may not be exactly where the buildings are. Using a reference mapping tool, such as Google Maps, can be helpful if you get stuck.




In this example, there are 2 dots that have the address we are looking for, so both dots need to be in the turf. 




(This happens because ultimately, VAN creates lists of people, not a list of buildings. The geographic location VAN has associated with each voter may be slightly different, so there may be more or fewer dots than you might expect for a given apartment complex.)



Keep in mind that VAN only knows about people who are registered to vote. So, you may find fewer folks in the building than you might expect. That is because not everyone in the building will be registered to vote.




Step Seven

Save your turf. If you want to use this as a knock list, you can generate a list number from My Turfs to print or use with MiniVAN. If you want to use the list for a contact method other than door-to-door canvassing, you can load the turf to your list by selecting it from My Folders.



Collecting good data on apartment knocks is something nobody has perfected and you could write pages on, but in general our advice is to do three things:


  1. Create a MiniVAN turf for every registered voter in the building
  2. Create your own sheets or digital forms to collect as much identifying information on anyone you talk to that isn't on your walk-sheets. In an ideal world you can collect this alongside voter reg or vote by mail applications so it's perfectly accurate to what will show up in VAN once their forms are processed. This will allow you to go back (usually takes 1-2 months for new registrations to populate in VAN) and enter canvass data for these individuals once they are processed.
    1. First/Last Name
    2. Address (unit number in particular)
    3. Phone
    4. Email
    5. Other identifying info like: age, sex, etc
  3. Bring voter registration and/or vote by mail applications and have anybody who isn't on your walk sheets fill them out at the door. Always remember to follow state laws when collecting these forms!


Getting lists for a specific apartment building is one of the toughest tasks in VAN. If you need assistance from the DFL data team and you have completed our required basic VAN training, then you are welcome to reach out to us for help at voterfile@dfl.org.