Step by Step Guide to Auditing Registration Dates

WTP Blog Article

By: Carol L. Snow | July 12, 2025

What You’ll Need  

• Moderate Excel proficiency (ability to add columns, filter, and sort).

• Access to your county’s voter roll data, updated weekly.

• A commitment to accurate registration lists.

1. Access the Voter Registration Data

North Carolina’s voter registration data is publicly available and updated every Sunday evening at https://www.ncsbe.gov/results-data/voter-registration-data. Find your county's file under the "Current Voter Registration Files" section.

2. Download and Unzip the File  

• Locate your county’s voter data file (e.g., a .zip file) and download it.

• Right-click the downloaded file and select “Extract All” to unzip it, revealing a CSV file with voter records.

  
  

3. Import the Data into Excel  

• Open a blank Excel spreadsheet.

• Click Data > From Text/CSV.

• Select the unzipped CSV file, click Import, then Transform Data to load it into Excel.

4. Select the Data You Need  

• Focus on active and inactive voters: In the “status_cd” column, filter for “A” (Active) and “I” (Inactive) statuses to exclude removed and denied records.  

• Using "Remove Columns", remove unnecessary columns (e.g., every column to the right of precinct_desc) to simplify the spreadsheet for analysis.  

• Click Close & Load to save the selected data into an Excel spreadsheet.

5. Calculate Age at Registration

To spot errors like teens "registered" before age 17, add two columns to estimate voters’ ages when registered:

• Year of Registration (e.g., new Column AE): Next to the “birth_year” column, Insert a column named “Year of Registration.” In the first row (e.g., AE2), enter =YEAR(Z2), assuming “registr_dt” (registration date) is in your Column Z. This extracts the year from the registration date.

• Age at Registration (e.g., new Column AF): Insert a column named “Age at Registration.” In the first row (e.g., AF2), enter =AE2-AG2, assuming “birth_year” is in Column AG. This subtracts the birth year from the registration year to estimate the voter’s age at registration.

6. Identify Suspiciously Young Registrants

• Sort the “Age at Registration” column from Smallest to Highest.

• Filter for ages “less than 17” to find voters who appear registered before they were eligible.

• Common issues: Missing registration dates or preregistrations incorrectly recording the application date (e.g., age 16) instead of the eligibility date (age 18). These errors violate HAVA and NVRA’s mandate for accurate voter rolls.

7. Check for Unlikely Older Registrants.

• Clear the “less than 17” filter.

• Filter “Age at Registration” for ages “greater than 90” to review voters recently registered at 90+ years old. These may be valid—your county certainly could have active seniors—but they’re worth checking for data entry errors, a common SEIMS issue.

Why It Matters

Voter registration is critical infrastructure, per the Department of Homeland Security. Errors like the 20,251 registrants with impossible registration dates undermine trust in our elections. By auditing your county’s voter registration list, you’re fighting for fair elections. Every County Board of Elections, Democratic, and Republican Party member should have someone with basic Excel skills to hold elections officials accountable. We the People can make a difference—start today!