Misleading Methodology, Distorted Data:

The FEC’s Analyses of Trends in Voter Registration, 1960 -- 1996

David Enrich
Citizens for True Democracy
January 20, 2000

 

Introduction

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) publishes and distributes statistics and studies regarding voter registration and turnout in the United States. Researchers, students, and media trust the FEC’s publications as authoritative and reliable. A review of the independent federal agency’s methodology and data regarding trends in voter registration shows that its work is often misleading.

This report highlights two major problems in the FEC’s analyses and presentations of trends in voter registration from 1960 to 1996.

  1. The FEC uses an inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent method to determine trends in voter registration. Its methodological error results in a substantial understatement of national voter registration as a percentage of the national voting age population, particularly in the presidential election years of 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972. This understatement is the core of the FEC’s argument that voter registration has steadily increased for the past 40 years. Correcting the error reveals that the percentage of registered voters has not substantially changed since 1960.


  2. The FEC’s website includes numerous errors, inconsistencies, repetitive data, and imprecise analyses. The inaccuracies pervade most of the Commission’s statistics on historic trends in the nation’s voting age population, voter registration, and voter turnout. The errors not only substantively affect much of the information available on the FEC’s site, but they also are indicative of the FEC’s irresponsible and lackadaisical approach to its presentation of information and its inevitable effect on students, academics, and concerned citizens.

On Monday, January 3, 2000, a brief summary of the numerous methodological and substantive errors was e-mailed to the FEC’s Office of Election Administration, and other FEC employees. The FEC has thus far taken no actions to either contact concerned parties or change or remove its misleading data from its website.

Supplemental research materials are available online via Citizens for True Democracy’s website, at www.truedemocracy.org.

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