DAILY VOTER REGISTRATION SNAPSHOTS TRANSPARENCY EARNS TRUST
In July 2023 the Ohio General Assembly passed into law the Secretary of State’s first-in-the-nation Data Analysis Transparency Archive (DATA) Act initiative, overhauling antiquated methods of election data collection and retention, platforming new data online, and helping to crowdsource election integrity.
To promote trust in Ohio elections through unprecedented transparency, the public now has access to a rich dataset: Daily Voter Registration Snapshots. This data allows the public to see for themselves, on a daily basis, which registrations were added, updated or removed from the voter rolls.
Through the search function on this page, members of the public can access a copy of the voter registration rolls as they appear in a particular county on a particular day. The files presented are exactly as they appeared when generated by the county boards of elections, with no modifications made by the Secretary of State’s team. Files are available on this page for a minimum of 22 months after their creation.
Due to the dynamic nature of Ohio’s voter registration system, which contains more than 8 million records, this dataset is large, with more than 60,000 county voter registration files available at any given time and a total file size of several terabytes. This tool is intended to provide access to raw data for members of the public inclined to perform their own analysis. Large searches will automatically be batched and provided as a bulk download.
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Additional Information
Each board of elections is required to create a prescribed daily record or “daily snapshot” of its voter registration database as of 4:00 p.m. each day1. Boards may continue processing registrations after 4:00 p.m. Registrations processed after 4:00 p.m. will be included in the following day’s record. Boards are required to securely transmit that prescribed daily record to the Secretary of State’s office no later than 11:59 p.m. each day. The Secretary of State’s office is required to archive the daily record and retain the data for at least 22 months after the election.2
The Secretary of State’s office does not edit, modify or otherwise alter county snapshots after they are transmitted. This data is NOT subject to change in response to revised reports from the county board of elections.
Under some circumstances (e.g. a power outage) it may be impossible for the county board of elections to create its daily snapshot at precisely 4:00 p.m. Under those circumstances, the closest snapshot will be substituted.
Daily snapshot records are public records under R.C. 149.43.
Ohio is one of only eight states with a fully decentralized election administration system, meaning elections and their associated records are managed directly by 88 individual county boards of elections rather than by a single, statewide election administrator. State law requires the Office of the Secretary of State to provide uniform guidance to these boards on how to register voters, administer the voting process, and otherwise adhere to state and federal election laws. Due to the decentralized nature of Ohio’s system, the definition and retention of election records sometimes developed inconsistencies between the counties over time. This led Secretary of State Frank LaRose to draft the DATA Act, creating a more consistent method of archiving and analyzing election-related data points across all 88 counties. As this new system is deployed, data discrepancies will be more transparent. These anomalies are typically due to definitional or sometimes clerical errors that boards can now more readily discover and correct, working in concert with the Secretary of State’s Office of Data Analytics and Archives. Ohio’s election data helps to make elections more transparent, giving all voters greater confidence in the integrity of our democracy.
Any questions related to such files or data therein should be directed to [email protected].
Download a single file
- Select the date and county from the search menu. Click the Search button to download one file.
Download a custom range of files:
All packages are zipped collections of raw county files.
- Select date(s) and county(ies) desired. Click the Search button.
- Custom ranges are limited to 87 counties and 7 days. Requests above these limits should use prepackaged bulk downloads.
- All custom package requests require an email address and are entered into a queue for on-demand generation and fulfillment. Processing time depends on the queue. Download links to custom packages will be generated and emailed to the address provided. Links expire in 72 hours.
Prepackaged bulk downloads:
All packages are zipped collections of raw county files.
- Statewide single-day packages contain all 88 county files for a given day. These packages will be available after 12:00 p.m. on the day following the snapshot date.
- Statewide single-day packages can be downloaded by selecting all 88 counties on a single date and clicking the Search button.
- County election-period packagescontain 128 files for a single county over the course of the election period. The DATA Act defines the election period for daily snapshots as the window from 46 days before to 81 days after Election Day. These packages will be available after 12:00 p.m. on the 82nd day after the election.
- County election-period packages can be downloaded by selecting one county and one election and clicking the Search button.
Results Download Details
Please fill out the fields below to request the files you have selected. It can take up to 24 hrs to recieve an email containing a link to download the files you have requested. The link will be valid for 72 hours.