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So I recently tried to get some voter registration data, especially historical information. The only state I could easily find the information available is Ohio(but only the most recent). It appears quite difficult to get this information in some states and there is no standard place to get this information, despite it being "public".

I'm not for sure if this can be distributed from one central federal location(since it's probably considered state data?). However, if it is at all possible, it would be very useful to me for a datamining project I have.

Can this be exposed through data.gov in a standard format and location?

Earlz
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2 Answers2

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It's unclear what you mean by "voter registration data".

If it's demographic statistical data, the Census Bureau has reports from 2012 and earlier, and there are more reports at the Election Assistance Commission. These reports cover the whole US.

if, instead, you are looking for actual voter lists (names, addresses), then it's unlikely to ever be available at a national level (for some states, the sale of the lists generates revenue).

However, some recent data (only) for a few states has been put online by Tom Alciere:

These are ugly sites, presumably just automatically produced to generate advertising traffic. But for about half the states, the full dataset has been made available to download without restrictions, and the others are easy to crawl.

Rob Hoare
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  • Yes, I tried contacting the webmaster of those sites, but he was not very helpful, basically just saying "contact the state and purchase it from them" – Earlz Aug 15 '13 at 13:54
  • He does (unlike most) make much of the data available for free (there are download links on the pages), and you could crawl the rest, so there's no need for you to go get the same data from the states. – Rob Hoare Aug 15 '13 at 18:17
  • North Carolina also makes its voter lists public: http://dl.ncsbe.gov/index.html – user3932000 Jan 02 '18 at 21:48
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U.S. voting is decentralized, so there is no federal collection of this data (or, at least, one that is published). You just have to go to each state and ask for it. For instance, Pennsylvania sells its data for $20: https://www.pavoterservices.state.pa.us/pages/PurchasePAFULLVoterExport.aspx

dancow
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