With the current interest in national and local elections, researchers may wonder if voters’ registration records have been kept in America. The answer is yes and no.

Some localities in America have kept voter registration records for longer periods of time than others. The content and format of the information varies. In addition to the name of the person who registered, you may find his or her year of birth or birth date, address, party affiliation, and sometimes other information.

An example, Affidavit of Registration from San Luis Obispo County, California, shows the person’s full name, post office address, residence, occupation, height, birthplace (state or country), party affiliation, how citizenship was acquired (citizenship of father, marriage to a citizen, decree of court, father’s naturalization, naturalization of husband, or Act of Congress), and sometimes other information. If naturalized, the record shows the year, court, and place of the event.

Older records are usually found in the county courthouse, courthouse annex, local historical society library, or state agency (such as the office of the secretary of state, the state archives, or the state historical society). Some voting records have been published. For example, Idaho Territorial Voters Poll Lists, 1863 (a list of voters in Idaho in 1863, alphabetically arranged by surname) is available at the Family History Library.

Some early voters’ records have been microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah as well, and references to them may be found in the Family History Library Catalog (FHLC) under the state or county of interest, and then under the subject heading “Voting Registers.”

Keep in mind that only men were registered in the nineteenth century. Women’s suffrage—the right of women to vote in elections—did not take effect until Congress ratified a new Constitutional amendment in 1920.

Great Registers
California, Arizona, Hawaii, and a few other western states have a type of voting registration record known as “Great Registers.” Local governments created the registers to identify names of voters in a given locality and to clarify voter districts. These records may assist in tracing the migration of early settlers and can serve as a supplement to federal and state census schedules, since they identify naturalized immigrants by county of residence. The registers for 1890 are especially valuable as a substitute for the missing 1890 population schedules.

Great Registers in California date from as early as 1866; they have been microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah up to about 1908 (time period varies by locality). Most printed registers were microfilmed at the California State Library in Sacramento, but some have also been filmed at other repositories. The records are alphabetically arranged by the first letter of the surname.

An sample entry from the Family History Library Catalog follows:

Author:   Yuba County (California). County Clerk.
Title:       Great Registers, 1867-96
Subject:   California, Yuba – Voting registers

Miscellaneous county voting registers for the period 1867-90 were microfilmed at the Los Angeles Public Library and may be found in the FHLC under “California – Voting Registers.”

Great Registers for Arizona are also catalogued in the FHLC under the name of the state (“Arizona – Voting Registers”) and also under the name of the state and county (“Arizona, Pima – Voting Registers”). Many of these records were filmed at the Arizona State Archives in Phoenix. Many of the Great Registers for Hawaii were filmed at the Hawaii State Archives in Honolulu.

An example of the printed Great Registers for San Francisco County, California, shows the following information:

• Voting Number
  
• Registration Number
  
• Name (arranged alphabetically by first letter of surname)
  
• Age
  
• Nativity (England, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, New York, Maine, Ireland, Prussia, etc.)
  
• Occupation
  
• Local Residence (street number and name of street)
  
• Naturalization (date, place, and name of court)
  
• Date of Registration

If the person was a naturalized citizen, such information as the following should be listed under the naturalization column.

Boston, Massachusetts, Municipal Court
San Francisco, U.S. Circuit Court
San Francisco, 4th District Court
Sauk County, Wisconsin, District Court

Armed with naturalization information, the researcher will then be able to search for naturalization records, first by checking the FHLC under that locality or by contacting the local court where the naturalization took place.

For further information on this subject, you may wish to listen to Betty K. Summers, who lectured on this topic at the National Genealogical Society’s 1998 NGS Conference in the States in Denver. Her lecture was entitled “Finding Ancestors in California’s Great Register” and is available on cassette from Audiotapes.com.

Kip Sperry is an associate professor of family history at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.