Federal Government Published Data on Number of Registered Voters Appears Very Inaccurate

Two agencies of the federal government publish data about the number of registered voters. The Census Bureau says there were approximately 157,596,000 registered voters as of November 2016. But the Election Assistance Commission says there were 214,109,367 registered voters at that time.

Here is a link to the EAC publication, “The Election Administration and Voting Survey”, which has that data. See page 21 (however, the page that has the page number 21 is really the 27th page in the report, when the roman numeral pages in the front are included).

Here is a link to the Census Bureau data. It is in the publication “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2016”. See Table 4a.

Ballot Access News has determined that there were 196,167,935 registered voters in November 2016. The BAN results are from each state’s election office, and do not include inactive voters. The state-by-state breakdown will be in the July 1, 2018 print issue of BAN.

Until recently, the best data on the number of registered voters in each state was furnished by the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, headed by Curtis Gans. But Gans died March 15, 2015, and his committee seems not to exist any longer.

Ballot Access News, starting in 1992, had published the number of registered voters in each state that has registration by party, but BAN has never had any registration data for the 19 states that don’t use registration by party.


Comments

Federal Government Published Data on Number of Registered Voters Appears Very Inaccurate — 10 Comments

  1. Registration stats are always a bit obsolete — folks pass away / move.

    See the recent Husted op.
    —-
    Nov 2016

    136,669,235 Prez Votes

    FEC – Fed elections 2016, p.5.

  2. EAC 140.1M votes cast
    FEC 136.7M presidential votes cast

    2.4% under vote for president is not unreasonable for 2016.

    CPS 137.6M voters (estimate)

    Since these match, we can assume they are accurate.

    The Current Population Survey is of around 60,000 households, or 100,000+ adults, which is a monthly survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. It is primarily for (un)employment statistics, but in November of election years they add a series of questions about participation in elections.

    Historically, respondents are more likely to say that they voted, than actually did. 61.4% said they voted, 24.0% said they didn’t, and 14.6% did not respond or refused to answer. Persons who do not respond may be more likely to not have voted (not responding is easier, than fibbing). About 5/7 of those who responded, said they voted, so it seems likely that less than 5/7 of non-respondents voted). Nonetheless, a combination of non-voters who said they voted and non-respondents who did vote, would likely drive reported voters over the number of actual voters.

    Given that the estimate of voters based on self-reporting is reasonably accurate, we can assume that the estimates of voter registrations is also correct. This means that the number of registrations includes significant numbers of duplicates, perhaps as much as 25%. You may recall that in 2014, when Orange County California made a deliberate attempt to clean up their voting rolls, and got commercial mailing lists. Able to contact voters in Arizona and elsewhere, they removed 17% of voters off their rolls.

    It is conceivable that people under-report being registered. If you aren’t interested in voting, you might not be aware that you told the DMV 10 years earlier, “sure, OK”.

  3. What part of the almost dead USA Const authorizes the *Current Population Survey* ???

  4. The Commerce Cl was obviously meant to allow the Congress to stop/reduce State BURDENS on commerce produced OUTSIDE of the State passing through the State and going to another State — esp added State taxes/fees.

    Early on — to STOP Taxes/Fees added on to commerce arriving in east coast States and going to early western States — KY, TN, OH, etc.

    See the 1787-1788 Federalist.

    IE — a TOTAL perversion/subversion of the Commerce cl in the 1930s by Roosevelt appointed SCOTUS HACKS to allow the gerrymander Congress to destroy the States — which now are almost DEAD — mere pass thru agents for USA welfare / control freak schemes — so-called *federal aid*.

  5. Left page numbers in The Federalist edited by Jacob E. Cooke (1961) (Fed. Number-Paragraph)

    http://www.constitution.org/fed/federali.txt

    *******

    A. Limited U.S.A. Government Powers – in General

    NOT brought up in hundreds of cases.

    86 14-8
    In the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. The subordinate governments, which can extend their care to all those other subjects which can be separately provided for, will retain their due authority and activity.
    105 17-1
    AN OBJECTION, of a nature different from that which has been stated and answered, in my last address, may perhaps be likewise urged against the principle of legislation for the individual citizens of America. It may be said that it would tend to render the government of the Union too powerful, and to enable it to absorb those residuary authorities, which it might be judged proper to leave with the States for local purposes. Allowing the utmost latitude to the love of power which any reasonable man can require, I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons intrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition. Commerce, finance, negotiation, and war seem to comprehend all the objects which have charms for minds governed by that passion; and all the powers necessary to those objects ought, in the first instance, to be lodged in the national depository. The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable that there should exist a disposition in the federal councils to usurp the powers with which they are connected; because the attempt to exercise those powers would be as troublesome as it would be nugatory; and the possession of them, for that reason, would contribute nothing to the dignity, to the importance, or to the splendor of the national government.
    197-198 31-11 (part)
    *** The State governments, by their original constitutions, are invested with complete sovereignty. ***
    199 32-2
    An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them, would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.
    203 32-5
    The necessity of a concurrent jurisdiction in certain cases results from the division of the sovereign power; and the rule that all authorities, of which the States are not explicitly divested in favor of the Union, remain with them in full vigor, is not a theoretical consequence of that division, but is clearly admitted by the whole tenor of the instrument which contains the articles of the proposed Constitution. We there find that, notwithstanding the affirmative grants of general authorities, there has been the most pointed care in those cases where it was deemed improper that the like authorities should reside in the States, to insert negative clauses prohibiting the exercise of them by the States. The tenth section of the first article consists altogether of such provisions. ***
    256 39-14
    But if the government be national with regard to the OPERATION of its powers, it changes its aspect again when we contemplate it in relation to the EXTENT of its powers. The idea of a national government involves in it, not only an authority over the individual citizens, but an indefinite supremacy over all persons and things, so far as they are objects of lawful government. Among a people consolidated into one nation, this supremacy is completely vested in the national legislature. Among communities united for particular purposes, it is vested partly in the general and partly in the municipal legislatures. In the former case, all local authorities are subordinate to the supreme; and may be controlled, directed, or abolished by it at pleasure. In the latter, the local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority, than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere. In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a NATIONAL one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects. ***
    262 40-9 (part)
    *** We have seen that in the new government, as in the old, the general powers are limited; and that the States, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction.
    262 40-10 (part)
    The truth is, that the great principles of the Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the articles of Confederation. ***
    309 45-3
    Several important considerations have been touched in the course of these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the State governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of the last than of the first scale.
    310 45-4 (part)
    We have seen, in all the examples of ancient and modern confederacies, the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members, to despoil the general government of its authorities, with a very ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the encroachments. Although, in most of these examples, the system has been so dissimilar from that under consideration as greatly to weaken any inference concerning the latter from the fate of the former, yet, as the States will retain, under the proposed Constitution, a very extensive portion of active sovereignty, the inference ought not to be wholly disregarded. ***
    313 45-9
    The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
    313 45-10
    The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States.
    553 82-3 (part)
    The principles established in a former paper [No. 31] teach us that the States will retain all pre-existing authorities which may not be exclusively delegated to the federal head; and that this exclusive delegation can only exist in one of three cases: where an exclusive authority is, in express terms, granted to the Union; or where a particular authority is granted to the Union, and the exercise of a like authority is prohibited to the States; or where an authority is granted to the Union, with which a similar authority in the States would be utterly incompatible. ***
    —-

    TOTAL subversion by the appointed super-partisan SCOTUS HACKS —

    compounded by the various Wars and govt caused Great Depressions / recessions — esp via USA regime deficits.

    See US Code, Title 42 — systematic destruction of the States.

  6. JR can look up the specific Federalist comments about the General Welfare and Inter-State Commerce Clauses and report back to BAN.

  7. See the SD- Wayfair op today.

    More mystification of the Commerce Cl. — more junk over-ruling earlier junk.

    Par for the course of the SCOTUS moron hacks — who obviously never read the 1787-1788 Federalist.

  8. One can get access to up-to-minute Kentucky figues, so one can easily tell that between June 15 and July 18 there were 107 new Demorats, 3977 new Republicans, and 835 others. Are there figures available for other states? I find it hard to believe that the Republican party is “shrinking,” as one facebook meme is claiming, when for every new Democrat in Kentucky, there are over 37 new Republicans.

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