When my parents decided to ignore common spelling conventions go with “Stefanie”, they didn’t know they were setting me up for a lifetime of annoyance and inconvenience. As a child, gift shop key chains and stickers were not made for me. As an adult, all types of important documents have had my name spelled incorrectly—everything from bank forms to government paperwork. However, the most disappointing example was receiving my high school diploma with my name spelled with a “ph” instead of an “f”- Stephanie. If your name is spelled wrong on your diploma, did you even graduate?
If I could get back all the time spent on the phone having the “well, did you spell my name with an F? I’m definitely in your system” conversation, I’d probably have enough time to have hobbies. If only all systems would utilize the modern magic of Fuzzy Matching, this dream could be achieved.
Fuzzy Matching is a way to process word-matching user or system queries to find a match in a database. When there is no exact match (eg “Kate”), fuzzy matching finds likely matches (e.g “Katie”).
CastIron VRS uses Elasticsearch, a distributed full-text search engine, to provide the Fuzzy Matching capabilities to the system. On top of the functional benefits, CastIron VRS’s query times for voter records are 10x faster compared with legacy systems (5-10 seconds down to a ½ second in our tests).
Here are three types of Fuzzy matching used in modern VRS:
If these descriptions of what Fuzzy Matching is are leaving your brain a bit…fuzzy, let’s talk instead about why it’s important. Here are a few benefits the application brings to a voter registration system:
As more databases turn to fuzzy matching for efficient processing speed and accuracy of data, and I spend less time on the phone with customer support, I think I’ll use my new free time to start a side-business…designing vanity keychains for all the Stefanies, Ericks, and Jennyfers of the world.
Bring your next election into the electronic age.
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