How the Democrats can keep from losing next time: Part I Understanding Voter Updates

Last updates per year for active registrants as of 12/19/2014.

Some of the Age and Precinct charting code updated  12:55 PM 12/29/2014 -RMF
Complete for now. Find Part II here -RMF. R Code for Part I  here. R Code for Part II here.


The chart above uses the "LastUpdateDate" of  a Whatcom County voter history to calculate which year the existing pool of active voters have received their last update. Accompanying this last update is a "StatusReason" for the update.  If you are in another WA County, you may have to request these fields be added to your voter history. For quite awhile, they did not appear as defaults in my voter history requests. In fact they represent critical information for anyone following the electoral history of a pool of voters in WA state.  A single voter can be updated in status many times. The approximate ~128K registered voters in Whatcom County have  "LastUpdateDate" dates like this:

 LUD_freq
   Year  Freq
1  2005 21051
2  2006  3314
3  2007  3164
4  2008 12779
5  2009  4977
6  2010  8734
7  2011  7444
8  2012 12629
9  2013 18075
10 2014 36324

For the last three years, those status reason look like this:

                                      StatusReason 2012 2013 2014
1      A - Phone/Email update from ballot envelope   NA 3344 7673
2        Third Party Change of Address (In-County) 1702 3114 6140
3                Added by WEI Statewide Online Reg 2639 2551 4893
4                  Address Updated by WEI Addr Chg 1163 2222 3416
5                     Updated by WEI Statewide ACS 1050 2034 2798
6                         Precinct Line Adjustment   NA   NA 2757
7                            Original Registration 2352 1720 2727
8                      Re-registration; no changes 1452  857 2001
9            Re-registration due to Address change 1177  996 1758
10                               Office Correction  205  619 1295
11          Name Updated by WEI Statewide Addr Chg  273  200  221
12  Name/Address Updated by WEI Statewide Addr Chg  271  145  204
13                                Confirm by voter   NA   NA  190
14              Re-registration due to Name change  155   76   94
15                     Confirmed 3PCOA (In-County)   61   59   75
16                    Verification Notice Returned   28    1   43
17    Re-Registration due to Name & Address Change   60   26   38
18   Third Party Change of Address (Out-of-County)   NA   NA    1
19                                                   NA    1   NA
20                        Cancel 45 Day No Contact   NA    5   NA
21                 Confirmed 3PCOA (Undeliverable)   NA    2   NA
22         Pending due to missing Physical Address    1   NA   NA
23                Re-registration; Signed Petition   19   NA   NA
24                      Z - Cancel (Inactive List)   NA   26   NA
25             Z - Original Registration - No I.D.    1   NA   NA
26 Z - Re-registration due to Seasonal Update Card   20   77   NA

Some charts are below. Remember that I am counting only "LastUpdateDate" numbers per precinct and per age bin.  This is not a historical record of the number of updates for any one voter or group in any given time period, just the last update for the year 2014 to date of my current 12/19/2014 voter list. To track all updates and their status reasons for  any given period of time for any voter or group of voters would require something more real time and cost prohibitive. A voter history in Whatcom County is $10 each. Although the state updates all voter records as large, zipped download daily, I am not sure "StatusReason" and "LastUpdateDate" are provided.

Tracking updates should, in my not so humble opinion, be part of any electoral strategy for any PCO. Similarly, anyone who gets kicked off the active voting list should show up as an alert.  So should address changes. This tracking could be done weekly with as few as 30 or 40 lines of code in R coupled to an alerting function that emailed PCOs voter status changes. Click to enlarge the charts.

These are the top 30 Precincts in Whatcom County for 2014 status updates of currently active voters as of 12/19/2014.

These are the top 30 Precincts in Whatcom County for 2014 status updates of currently active voters in the 42nd LD only as of 12/19/2014.

The front third of this graph consists of precincts all of whom hav over 200 active (registered) voters each that experienced a voter update in 2014. The next graph and table look at that the top 30 explicitly:

          PrecinctID AllWC x42nd
1         245   719    NA
2         134   633   633
3         263   587    NA
4         253   575    NA
5         107   560   560
6         225   509   509
7         136   455   455
8         201   439   439
9         135   426   426
10        146   400   400
11        208   397   397
12        229   369   369
13        247   367    NA
14        505   362   362
15        231   346    NA
16        108   344   344
17        220   344   344
18        153   329   329
19        206   316   316
20        302   313   313
21        127   312   312
22        601   299   299
23        147   298   298
24        258   295    NA
25        228   291    NA
26        182   290    NA
27        227   289   289
28        250   287    NA
29        246   286    NA
30        508   286   286