Verifying Voter Registration Records

Abstract

This study investigates the reliability of Florida’s voter registration files through a phone survey, asking respondents to verify their records. We find 17.7% of registrants fail to verify at least one identifying piece of information. Applying the total survey error (TSE) framework, we classify these errors as due to coverage error, measurement error, or processing error. These inconsistencies create election administration and campaign inefficiencies, which lead to poorer voter experiences, and challenge the validity of some research based on these data. Furthermore, if registration records do not accurately capture the members of protected groups, the data are less helpful in both government monitoring and enforcement. We suggest voter registration forms should be treated like survey questionnaires so as to improve data quality with better form design, and that some vote overreport bias is attributable to limitations of voter file data, not to respondents’ vote misreporting.

When Do Voter Files Accurately Measure Turnout? How Transitory Voter File Snapshots Impact Research and Representation

“…Only when such a last-minute flurry of activities has passed can there be a significant chance of having all records of registrants who did vote. In a sense, accretion bias results from processing error, as noted in Shino et al (2020).…”

“…As the underlying electorate shifts due to events such as new registration, deaths (Ansolabehere and Hersh, 2014), felon dis/re-enfranchisements (Morse, 2021;Morris, 2021), and moves , the voter files are changing almost daily (Kim et al, 2020) and may even have coverage, measurement, or processing error (Shino et al, 2020). In addition, many states have use-it-orlose-it voting laws that will remove registrations of active voters if they have not voted for some period (Rosenstone and Wolfinger, 1978).…”

Vote-by-mail Ballot Rejection and Experience with Mail-in Voting

“…13 In some states, there are either no publicly-available lists of how voters cast their ballots, making it impossible to know which voters have VBM experience and which do not, or there is no publicly available information on the final disposition of VBM ballots, making it impossible to determine whether a voter's VBM ballot was rejected and, if so, why. The open records laws in Florida, however, are such that officials make public lists of (1) voters who cast VBM ballots in an election of interest, (2) dispositions of these cast ballots, and (3) extensive demographic information about registered voters (Shino et al, 2020).…”

Are Voter Rolls Suitable Sampling Frames for Household Surveys? Evidence from India

“…Second, we contribute to the literature on the quality of voter rolls for household sampling. A rich literature documents errors in voter registration records in the United States using phone surveys (Shino et al 2020) and mailed surveys (Ansolabehere et al 2010), and links errors in records to subsequent exclusion from voter lists (Merivaki 2020). Some researchers have used voter lists as sampling frames for web and phone surveys (e.g., Shino et al 2022).…”