What office a campaign is running for

A campaign’s jurisdiction is the answer to one question: what office is this campaign contesting, and where. Set it when you create a campaign under Workspace → Campaigns, or edit it there afterwards. It decides three things — the words the app uses for electoral areas, which boundary maps your households are matched against, and which further questions the campaign form bothers to ask you.

Three words that are not interchangeable

This is the part people get wrong, and it is worth two minutes because everything else follows from it.

• District — in Canada, a riding — is a seat area: the territory that elects one representative. An MP, an MLA, a member of Congress, a state legislator.
• Ward is usually a seat area too, one level down: the territory that elects one councillor.
• Precinct — in Canada a polling division, in New York an election district — is not a seat area at all. It is a voting subdivision inside one: the area served by a single polling place.

So district and ward are normally the same kind of thing at different levels of government, and a precinct is a different kind of thing that sits inside either one. That distinction does real work here. A riding or a congressional district holds tens of thousands of doors, which is far too many to hand to anybody. A precinct or a polling division is roughly one evening’s walk. A riding is what a campaign is for; a precinct is what a canvassing turf is cut along.

The seven choices

• Canada — federal: the seat area is a riding, subdivided into polling divisions. There is no province to pick; federal ridings cover the whole country.
• Canada — provincial: also ridings, except where the province uses its own word. Alberta and Saskatchewan say constituency, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island say district, Quebec says circonscription. Picking the province applies the right word for you; you do not have to know the list.
• Canada — municipal: the seat area is a ward (district in Quebec), subdivided into polls. Mayors — and every seat on Vancouver city council — are elected across the whole municipality instead, which is what the at-large tick box below is for.
• United States — federal: congressional districts, subdivided into precincts. A US Senate race has no district at all: senators are elected statewide.
• United States — state: legislative districts, subdivided into precincts. State legislatures have two chambers, so this is the one choice that asks you which — an upper-chamber (senate) race and a lower-chamber (house or assembly) race are matched against entirely different maps, and there is no way to work out one from the other. Governor and the other statewide offices have no district.
• United States — local: council districts or wards, subdivided into precincts. At-large council seats have no district.
• Other: everything not modelled in detail — school board, county commission, band council, a special district, or a race that is none of the above. The neutral words district and subdivision are used, and no region is required.

What the campaign form asks

Only the questions that apply to your choice are shown. A Canadian federal campaign never sees a chamber selector; a church or non-profit workspace never sees any of this at all.

• Country and level — the seven choices above.
• Province or state — asked for everything except a Canadian federal race and Other.
• Municipality — asked for a Canadian municipal or a US local race.
• Chamber — upper or lower. US state races only.
• Elected at large — tick this when the seat has no territory of its own: a US senator, a governor, a mayor, an at-large councillor, or the single statewide congressional seat that Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming each have. Ticking it hides the seat name, because there is not one — the seat covers the municipality you named, or the whole region if you named none.
• Seat name — Ottawa Centre, Calgary-Elbow, Ward 14, OH-3, LD-12. This is the district printed on donation receipts, which is not always the area you canvass: a candidate running in one city ward is still a candidate of the whole municipality, so the receipt names the municipality.
• Which areas this campaign represents — the separate question of which map areas are yours, used to tell whether an address is in your territory. Usually one, and you pick it from whichever map covers your office. Add several when several areas elect one seat: a regional councillor elected by two wards represents both, and an address in either counts as inside. If no map covers your office yet — which is normal for municipal wards, since most municipalities publish none — type the name instead and add a map later.
• Seat position — only where more than one person is elected from the same district. Arizona’s House and New Jersey’s General Assembly elect two per district, Washington numbers positions within each legislative district, and at-large council seats are frequently numbered. Type whatever the ballot says: Position 2, Seat B, Place 4.
• What to call this area — a manual override for the word. Leave it blank unless your race genuinely uses something other than what the app picked.
• Office title — MP, MLA, Councillor, Representative, Senator. It appears in wording and nothing else.

What changes once it is set

• Column headers and page copy stop hedging. The Households grid says Riding, Ward, or Congressional district, and its summary line counts “across 12 ridings” or “across 40 precincts”.
• The Canvassing coverage tab and the turf-cutting explanation use your subdivision’s word.
• The smart-list rule builder offers your electoral areas as a filter, so “everyone in precinct 12” is a list you can build. See Smart and static lists.
• Turfs are cut along the finest map your workspace holds for that campaign. See Boundary maps.
• The starter tags a new workspace is seeded with use your word rather than assuming Canadian federal vocabulary.

What pplCRM does not do for US campaigns

Worth knowing before you plan around it. US political contributions are not tax-deductible federally, so there is no TAX receipt to issue and pplCRM issues none. Donors are still sent a plain donation receipt for every gift, which makes no tax claim. It also does not prepare or file FEC or state disclosure reports — that is a separate compliance system with its own contributor occupation, employer and per-donor limit rules, and this product does not have it. A US workspace records gifts in the Donations ledger and exports them; the filing itself happens elsewhere. Canadian receipting is unaffected — see Donation receipts and giving statements.