They are deeply embedded in law and politics, through the census, police records, electoral polling, and many other means.
Volunteers were identified and validated using oral communications with town social networks, communidade records, electoral rolls, church baptismal and marriage records going back 150 400 years for Christian subjects, and the Ramnathi temple community for Hindu participants.
His father, "Blackjack", was a stock-car driver who is not quite as famous as Tark the Shark, but he has a personal record of electoral success.
He had a record of electoral success in the nation's most populous state and valuable experience from two losing campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination.
The governor has a record of electoral victories all the way back to 1984, including in a couple of difficult races against Jim Hightower and John Sharp and some that were difficult on paper and easy in fact, against Tony Sanchez and Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Yet Andy Burnham, the frontrunner for Labour's top job, is on record dismissing electoral reform as a "peripheral issue", as a "kind of fringe pursuit for Guardian-reading classes".
Still, with their eyes on the metaphorical fish market, not the car terminal, Britons are less inclined to reward the Tories for their economic record than electoral history suggests they should.There is also a political reason for that, which, again, Grimsby illustrates.
In a record UK electoral turnout, some 85% of those able to vote chose to take part in the decision on the nation's future.
The Liberal Democrats don't have a strong record of electoral success in Staffordshire, while both UKIP and the Green Party have made some gains in local elections in recent years.
However, by the time I found one willing to go on the record, the electoral map had shifted.
Reagan won a record 525 electoral votes, the most of any candidate in United States history, and received 58.8% of the popular vote to Mondale's 40.6%.
