Differences among Latina/o, Asian American, and White Online Registrants in California

Abstract

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2014-0011 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2014; 6(3): 415–423 Lisa Garcia Bedolla* and Veronica N. Velez Differences among Latina/o, Asian American, and White Online Registrants in California Abstract: In September 2012, the California Secretary of State’s office offered eli- gible voters the opportunity to register online for the first time. This article ana- lyzes those eligible voters that registered online for the November 2012 election. We find important differences among these registrants by ethnorace, age, and gender. We also find that a large proportion of these online registrants were new voters and that they did not concentrate in affluent census tracts, suggesting that this electoral reform did help to expand the electorate for that election. Keywords: electoral reform; gender; race; registration; socioeconomic status. *Corresponding author: Lisa Garcia Bedolla, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, e-mail: lgarciab@berkeley.edu Veronica N. Velez: Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA 1 Introduction On 19 September 2012, the state of California launched its online voter registration system. During the just under 5-week window available for eligible voters to reg- ister online, 787,337 took advantage of this option. 1 This large take-up by voters is 1 This analysis is based on data provided by Political Data, Inc. (PDI), a data vendor that collects data from each of the 58 counties in California and other proprietary sources. PDI acquires voter data from individual counties at regular intervals, typically no less often than once per 4 months. When voter records are retrieved from counties, they are subjected to record standardization, vali- dation, and enhancement. Standardization includes the application of an internal matching ref- erence key, an internal ID tracking number, and name field standardization. Validations against death registries and National Change of Address listings are also performed. For the identification of voters who filed for registration online, PDI relies largely on the record keeping of the individual counties. In most cases, the registration method is recorded and maintained by the county regis- trar-recorder and can be added directly to voter file records. In certain counties, the voter data is not stored in a manner that allows for direct recording of the registration method, which forces PDI to use other means to determine how a voter filed their registration. Of these counties that do not store the registration method directly most have a source code on each voter’s actual affidavit number. By parsing out these codes, it is possible to determine which voters filed for registration online. There are, unfortunately, several counties that are unable to record the application source identifier into the voter’s affidavit number, which make recovering registration method in those counties impossible via currently available means. Those counties are excluded from this analysis.