DemocracyInAction and Catalist have just made a remarkable new deal.

Let me back up. DIA is one of the core components of the progressive political infrastructure, providing online advocacy tools to a wide range of left-leaning non-profits. And Catalist is the political data giant that grew out of the Clinton camp's upset over how the DNC was keeping up with the GOP on the tech and data front. More on that here. The deal? DIA's clients get free access to Catalist's world-class data. In exchange, they must turn over to Catalist the details on their own donors.

The Atlantic's Mark Ambinder has a post up on voter files that's got us here at techPres and PdF thinking. Mark's post reports on how Rock the Vote, the 501c3 voter registration group, is making creative use of data from Catalist, the progressive data operation. Rock the Vote attracts volunteers through Facebook who are given the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of people in swing states who have downloaded voter registration forms but not taken the final step of filing them. You can give it a go yourself here. (Shaun Dakin, you having a heart attack yet?)

Interesting in and of itself, no doubt. But Mark's post is a nibble on a much bigger topic. As we get closer and closer to November 4th, the nuts-and-bolts of campaigning take on huge importance. And nothing, perhaps, is more critical to those efforts as the voter databases that the campaigns are tapping into. And that makes it well worth it for us here at techPresident to attempt to map out the voter file landscape. So let's take a crack at doing that.

I'm in a breakout session at the New Democratic Network's daylong conference on "New Tools, New Audiences," listening to Vijay Ravindran, the CTO of Catalist, talk about web 2.0 and its development of an "Enhanced Voter File." As usual, these are my rushed notes, and at best a good paraphrase of what was said, not direct quotation.