Overview

Ohio is a classic battleground state in U.S. electoral politics, and its voters are the subject of intense media scrutiny and campaign efforts in the months prior to presidential elections. Information about the state’s registered voters is kept for official purposes in a database known as a voter file. This database helps state, county, and local officials administer elections in accordance with Ohio and federal election laws.

What resources are being organized?

Voter files are subject to heavy regulation, so their scope tends to be narrow. The Ohio voter file contains records that describe each voter, including identifying and contact information, information about the voter’s political jurisdictions (often called “districts”), and indications of the past elections in which the voter participated (called “vote history”). In addition to individual voter information, the system also contains geographical descriptions of each political jurisdiction so new voters can be assigned to districts and existing voters can be redistricted when they move or jurisdiction boundaries change.

Despite the limited scope, Ohio’s voter file is one of the nation’s largest: in early December 2013 the Ohio file contained nearly 6.5 million voter records.

Why are the resources organized?

Voter file maintenance is primarily motivated by officials’ need to administer elections in compliance with laws and regulations. Ohio state law requires that all voters register to vote at least 30 days prior to an election, and the voter file is a definitive list of who may vote. The file is also used to determine precinct locations that are convenient to and fairly distributed among the voting population. This precinct formation can be subject to political interference since precinct size and location can have nontrivial effects on who is willing and able to vote on election day.

The main federal law governing voter files is the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), which set national standards for voter files, among other election-related procedures, in the wake of the disputed 2000 U.S. presidential election. HAVA requires that states create a centralized, computerized statewide voter registration list, so Ohio’s voter file is maintained in part to comply with this law.

Furthermore, Ohio’s maintenance of a voter file enables compliance with state laws regarding voter eligibility. State law forbids voting by incarcerated felons, individuals declared incompetent for voting purposes by a court, and individuals who have been permanently disenfranchised for violating election laws, so election officials must collect and maintain sufficient information from registrants to verify eligibility with respect to these criteria.

How much are the resources organized?

A key decision when building a voter file is the extent to which voters are associated with political jurisdictions. A state could choose to organize voters only into state and federal jurisdictions—congressional district and state legislative districts—expecting county or municipal election administrators to associate voters with minor political jurisdictions, or the state could maintain a wide variety of federal, state, and local districts. Ohio is in the latter category, associating voters with a number of lower level districts such as library board, municipal court, and educational service center board.

This raises potential vocabulary issues, as some counties may refer to their governing body as a “county council” and others may call it a “county board”. State officials must either create and enforce naming standards, or map each minor jurisdiction to the canonical set of district fields that exists on the voter file.

Another organizing decision that state officials face is how to maintain and report each voter’s vote history. While general elections always fall on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, primary and special elections in Ohio can occur on virtually any Tuesday of the year; moreover, counties often determine their own primary election date. As such, there may be multiple primary dates in Ohio in a given year, and Ohio officials record votes in each primary—i.e., separate indicators for participation in the March 4, 2008 primary and the October 14, 2008 primary, not a generic indicator of participation in any 2008 primary election.

In contrast, the voter file only reports a yes/no indicator of whether an individual voted in a particular election, even though Ohio offers absentee and early voting options to cast a ballot prior to election day. By ignoring the actual date a vote was cast, state officials restrict users’ ability to analyze the frequency or effect of absentee and early voting in the state.

When are the resources organized?

When an individual submits a registration form, election officials process it within days and, if the person is eligible, they add a record to the voter file, assigning the voter to districts in the process. Voter records may later be updated to reflect name or address changes, the latter generally triggering a reassociation with political jurisdictions.

A common but controversial maintenance activity is a voter file “purge”, where duplicate records are identified and merged, and records for deceased or inactive voters are removed. Although such reorganization is periodically necessary, the procedures used to identify inactive and duplicate voters, as well as the timing of the purge, can be subject to political influence.

Who does the organizing?

State election officials, under the direction of Ohio’s Secretary of State, are responsible for maintaining the voter file. These officials sit atop a hierarchy of state, county, and local officials who are responsible for using the voter file while administering elections.

Other considerations

Although voter files are typically public information, Ohio is unusual in that its voter file is freely available on a state website. Since many outside groups are now interested in voter files, officials must balance access requirements with protecting voters’ privacy. This is the subject of an ongoing conversation that may ultimately affect how Ohio organizes and maintains its voter file.