Using the EAVS: Voter Registration

The Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and Voting Survey has been released.  This is the first in a series of posts that will highlight some patterns and anomalies in the data.

The EAVS is one of the best ways to assess whether or not a state is adhering to the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which obligates states, among other things, to provide the option to register to vote via motor vehicle agencies and other social service agencies.

To assess compliance, however, the data need to be reported.  I have shown below a table that reports the state by state totals from three variables in the EAVS that should in principle have the same value:

  • QA5a – “The total number of registration forms received by your jurisdiction”
  • QA6_Total” – “Registration forms received, broken down by source”, the reported figure should be a sum of the individual sources, but is also labeled explicitly on the questionnaire as “QA5a”, alerting the jurisdiction that that total here should match the total listed above.
  • Regtotal – My own calculated total of registration forms from all sources.

The data are reported by state below.  As you can see, there are only eleven states where all three figures match as they are supposed to: AL, CO, CT, LA, ME, MI, MN, NC, NH, OR, and WY.   ND is not required to report this information.  These states get an “A+” for reporting.

Wisconsin simply forgot to enter the “total” for QA6_Total, but the numbers match. We’ll give them an “A”.

Idaho, New Jersey, and South Dakota reported nothing for the NVRA section at all. Not sure they can get a grade other than “F”.

I haven’t probed the other differences in order to give more nuanced grades. I’ll leave that to other experts.

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