Voter List Maintenance in Orange County, California

Late last year, we featured the significant amount of post-election data provided by the registrar’s office in Orange County, California. The office also provides a great deal of information related to other aspects of election administration, including reports on voter registration accuracy and voter list maintenance.

The 2012 report provides detailed data about how the county, with more than 1.6 million registered voters, maintains its rolls, how the process has changed and improved over the years, and what challenges still remain. Highlights from the report include:

• From 2001-2011, Orange County processed 1,668,666 paper registration forms.
• In the weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election, registration forms were coming into the registrar’s office at a rate of more than 3,000 each day, including one day where the office processed over 5,000 forms.
• Since 2008, the office has processed and updated 328,747 voter records based on National Change of Address data provided by the post office. 
• In 2010, over 56,000 voter records were updated due to changes reported by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
• Of the more than 35,000 registrations canceled in 2010, only 574, or less than 2 percent, were at the voter’s request. One-third was because the voter was deceased, and another third was canceled after the office was notified by the secretary of state’s office or DMV that the voter had moved out of the county.
• Between 800 and 1,000 records of deceased voters are canceled per month in 2010.