Nativity and California Online Voter Registration and Turnout in November 2012

Abstract

In September 2012, the California Secretary of State made it possible, for the first time, for the state's eligible voters to register online. In fewer than 5 weeks prior to the November 2012 election, 787,337 of California's eligible voters took advantage of this opportunity. In this article, I explore the demographics of California's November 2012 online registrants with a particular focus on nativity in order to see whether US born Latina/o and Asian-American online registrants have different characteristics than those who are naturalized. I find Latino and Asian-American naturalized voters used online voter registration at high rates, but that Asian-origin naturalized voters did so at lower rates than Latinos, sug- gesting the need for more targeted outreach to naturalized voters of different eth- noracial backgrounds. 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, validation, and enhancement. Standardization includes the application of an internal match- ing reference 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 iden- tification 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 registrar-recorder and can be added directly to voter file records. In certain counties, the