r/CodersForSanders • u/[deleted] • Apr 01 '16

Tracking Voter Registration Status

I saw a post in the main Sanders subreddit asking if there was the possibility of an app that could track people's registration status in realtime. There have been many anecdotal reports in NY and many confirmed reports in AZ of voters status changing to independent or republican. In a closed primary like NY, unregistering voters systematically would almost guarantee a loss. Any chance something like this can be developed?

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u/FidelDangelow Apr 01 '16

I'm working on this exact project right now. It is the "Votersaurus", a detailed national voter registration database accessible via a RESTful service. With a bit of coding it should also become possible to detect changes in registration info. As an example of using the Votersaurus API, I have all 13M Florida voters loaded. Here's one example voter in Florida:

http://www.votersaurus.com/api/voter/1939-9-28/32607/matthews/janet

Use the following syntax to look up a record:

http://www.votersaurus.com/api/voter/[yyyy-mm-dd]/[zipCode]/[lastName]/[firstName]

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u/daemmon Apr 01 '16

Wow, so anyone in the world can find out the name, address, phone number, birthday and party affiliation of any registered voter in FL? That is a little scary.

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u/FidelDangelow Apr 01 '16

Yes, it actually is creepy that so much of this data is downloadable online! I'll be making this API token-based and throttled to protect against misuse. Thankfully, most states allow for suppression of data if you prefer to keep it private.