EPEC Team Newsletter: By Law, Voters Must Be At Least Sixteen (16) Years Of Age When They Register To Vote; We See Evidence Of Voters Registering Under Age 16; Are Flawed Processes To Blame?
This week EPEC Team is publishing a series of analyses that look into voter-list management processes.
The results are part of a deeper dive into President Trump’s March 25th Executive Order 14248, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” which lists federal statutes that obligate states to achieve accurate election results.
For example, it says in part:
Federal laws, such as the National Voter Registration Act (Public Law 103-31) and the Help America Vote Act (Public Law 107-252), require States to maintain an accurate and current Statewide list of every legally registered voter in the State.
We have observed many issues regarding “Motor Voter” provisions of the NVRA, which sends noncitizen registrations to Dept. of Elections — even if they check “no” on the current honor system for affirming citizenship.
EPEC Team has documented voting history of ineligible noncitizens casting ballots before they are removed from voter rolls.
Today we are looking at another factor of eligibility: age, and whether the DMV or other voter-registration sources are behind an apparent rise of under-age individuals who appear on Virginia’s voter rolls.
Virginia statute says individuals can register if they are 16 and three months of age. (The DMV allows individuals aged 15 and six months to acquire “learners” permits.)
ANALYSIS: Underage on Virginia’s Registered Voter Lists
By EPEC Team Senior Analyst and Board Member Rick Naigle
EPEC Team’s analysis of Virginia’s Registered Voter List (RVL) finds 497 entries in which the registrant was less than 16 years of age at the time of registration.
Of those, 271 are female, 225 are male, and one voter is gender undefined.
The voters appeared to be registered on 326 separate occasions; that works out to 1.5 voter registrations on average, per occasion (usually one voter each time).
We analyzed multi-entry [registration] dates, such as February, September, and October, between registration years 1991 and 2013; we found 21 instances of under-age voters added on September 14 , 2001.
The pattern suggests these entries either resulted from voter registration drives, or via wayward data transfers from the DMV, which sends “Motor Voter” updates to Dept. of Elections’ offices on a rolling basis.
We might presume that birth dates could have been garbled in the transfer from DMV to Elections Department officials.
We cannot rule out voter registration list manipulation, either.
Most important, we are raising questions about a process that allows under-age individuals on the voter rolls — long before the age they qualify to register, or to vote.
The chart below shows the timing of multi-registration transactions.
Methodology
We computed the age of the voter at the time of registration by subtracting Year of Birth from Year of Registration, then filtered on ages computed to be Age 15 or less.
The range of ages was from -82 years of age to 15 years of age. We assume the root cause of under-age registrations is data quality control. Perhaps the voters were age 16 or older at the time of registration but someone did not enter it correctly.
Process Fix
Data input errors are preventable with simple logic embedded in data input rules, which prevent ineligible registrations from being entered.
Can logic rules prevent Registered Voter Lists from manipulation? Log files for the VERIS registration system might be able to answer that question.
The chart below shows the distribution of underage registrations, by age at the time the registration was recorded.
Assuming these are all attributable to error, the issue exists in 93 of the 133 Localities in Virginia:
EPEC Team analysts are standing by to identify how we found voter registrations containing these errors. In keeping with our mission of promoting transparency to drive voter participation, EPEC Team members are also happy to brief General Registrars and/or the Commissioner of Elections on our findings. #
This is one in a series of reports on voter-list maintenance analysis amid a major reform of the National Voter Registration Act that just passed out of the House.
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