Questions about Help America Vote Verification data in many states
Why does the Social Security Administration often have difficulties verifying new voter registration applicants? Why do so many matches for new applications show deceased?
Updated Oct 8. [GitHub repository has analysis plots and data from 2024-09-28.]
This article first gives a brief background about “motor voter” and the Help America Voter Verification (HAVV) used to verify new voters in many states across the country.
HAVV and citizenship are briefly discussed.
The next section shows current issues in time series of HAVV data from five states over the time period 2014 to present. Processes and data issues are often very state specific.
The article concludes with a download link to a GitHub repository with additional technical info, computer code in notebooks, and plots for all HAVV states.
Background
The “motor voter law” (the National Voter Registration Act of 1993) enabled state motor vehicle agencies to register voters.
Anyone seeking a driver’s license (or renewal) or a car registration can now register to vote, or update voter registration information, at a Motor Vehicle Administration office (called Department of Motor Vehicles in some states).
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 enabled the Social Security Administration to provide name verifications using full or partial Social Security Numbers on a state’s voter registration form when a voter did not have a state-issued ID.
Some states ask a new voter for a full Social Security Number, but 43 states only ask for the last four digits of the SSN.
[However, registration is still allowed without either a driver’s license or a full or partial SSN! See “box 6” instructions on the National Mail Voter Registration Form that all states must accept: “If you have neither a drivers license nor a social security number, please indicate this on the form and a number will be assigned to you by your state.”]
New voter applications in particular are verified through a process developed by the Social Security Administration using a nonprofit as an intermediary. This verification process is called “Help America Vote Verification” or HAVV.
Social Security maintains a web page with weekly summaries by state of HAVV transactions. [These summaries are often delayed a few weeks.] Plots of these data are shown below for selected states.
Voter Verification Request
The diagram below shows the conceptual path followed by a new voter verification request from a local motor vehicle office to the Social Security Administration through the nonprofit, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
Information Exchange Agreement between AAMVA and SSA
This agreement between nonprofit AAMVA and the government provides details about the diagram above. Some notes from that document:
HAVA requires the official responsible for the State MVA to enter into an agreement with the Commissioner of Social Security for the purpose of verifying applicable information.
AAMVA will operate and maintain its AAMVAnet® network to serve as the conduit between SSA and MVAs that receive from SSA online partial or full SSN verification service for new voter registration.
SSA will compare the information submitted through AAMVAnet® with the information in SSA’s Master Files of Social Security Number (SSN) Holders and SSN Applications (Enumeration System) system of records … and respond to the MVAs with one of the following alphanumeric response codes:
S = Invalid Input Data
T = Multiple Matches deceased
V = Multiple Matches Alive
W = Multiple Matches Mixed
X = Single Match Alive
Y = Single Match Deceased
Z = No Match
9 = System Error
AAMVA will not use the data provided by SSA to extract information concerning individuals for any purpose not specified in this Agreement.
The data SSA provides through AAMVAnet® under this Agreement will remain the property of SSA. AAMVA will not save any data pertaining to individuals in any form after the data exchange with SSA is complete under terms of this Agreement.
A separate AAMVA document gives the government rate schedule for “Verification Services” include HAVV:
Product & Services Catalog, Government Rate Schedule, American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, Oct. 1, 2023.
Section 3.2.2.1 of this document shows yearly and quarterly HAVA/HAVV fees.
HAVV and Citizenship Verification
The Voter Reference Foundation gives excellent additional information about HAVV:
If the registrant does not provide a DLN (driver’s license number) when registering to vote, identity can be obtained using the Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) interface which tries to find a match using name, date of birth, and the last 4 digits of the registrant’s social security number. …
Currently 43 states use this 4-digit system to verify voter information. New Mexico, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia do not use the 4-digit system, as they are permitted to use the full 9-digit SSN on their voter registration applications. North Dakota does not require voter registration, so it does not use any SSA verification system, and the District of Columbia and the US territories do not use this system either.
While the system does validate identity, it does not validate citizenship. Nationally, no definitive proof of citizenship is required to vote in elections for federal offices. Arizona is the only state in the country that requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote, however Arizona uses a bifurcated system that complies with federal law, allowing individuals who do not provide proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, however these individuals are not permitted to vote for state and local offices.
This does not mean that non-citizens are registering to vote everywhere, but it does reflect a gap in the elections process that has caused significant concern to the majority of Americans when polled about the subject.
The SSA tracks the weekly number of HAVV transactions by state which is public data and can be reviewed on their website www.ssa.gov . These transactions only represent one step of the voter registration process and there are many other verification methods implemented by states when registering a voter including checking the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, Death indexes, and felon/incapacitated lists to name a few, to ensure only those eligible to vote are registered.
A separate AAMVA page addresses their services for Verification of Lawful Status.
AAMVA’s map shows 22 states are currently participating in their Verification of Lawful Status technology system, but this is not related to HAVV.
Section 3.2.3 of the Products & Services catalog mentioned in the last section show Verification of Lawful Status (VLS) fees:
Current issues with HAVV Data
The plots below show time series from more than a decade of weekly data from Jan. 4, 2014 through June 22, 2024. [See GitHub repository for latest data.]
These selected states are:
Illinois
Maryland
New York
Oregon
Texas
Each state seems to have its own story. Each state (and sometimes counties) can have their own processes on what exactly they do with the feedback of the HAVV verification.
Data and plots for all HAVV states can be downloaded from a GitHub repository mentioned below.
Illinois
For some reason transaction volume in Illinois (blue line) was down in 2022 and early 2023, but nonmatch (red line) and match but deceased (black line) rates were higher during this same period.
A "normal" pattern was then seen in late 2023 and so far in 2024.
Maryland
What explains the pattern changes in Maryland starting in early 2022?
Why is the nonmatching rate setting new records in 2022-2024?
Why did the deceased match rates set a new record in mid-2022?
New York
Why does New York's nonmatch rate spike periodically over 90% and is still 40% almost all the time?
It's curious that New York's match death rate is much lower than many other states.
Oregon
Oregon has a periodic spike in transactions before Nov. general elections. Why was the spike in 2022 so small compared to other years?
It's curious that Oregon's nonmatch rate has been trending downward since about 2019, but the match deceased rate is going up during this same period.
Texas
Texas has perhaps the largest transaction numbers of any state.
What's causing the changes in the nonmatch rate and the match but deceased rates since late 2022?
HAVV analysis Repository on GitHub
Repository: github.com/EarlGlynn/HAVV-analysis [Select Code | Download ZIP]
Use latest directory: 2024-09-28
This repository provides:
Technical information about Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) data.
Brief PowerPoint overview of process. [Download “raw file” and view locally.]
RStudio notebook for “first look” at data: download, clean, explore the 700+ sheets in Excel file. Combine sheets into a single sheet for analysis. Split national file into individual files by state.
RStudio notebook to create plots for all states with key HAVV data.
Folders containing HAVV data by state:
HAVV data files in Excel by state for anyone to explore.
[Download individual state Excel file here.]Plots in PNG or PDF formats for anyone to view and scrutinize.
[View plots online at GitHub: PNGs and PDFs.]
Please share your comments about issues you find in the HAVV data for your state.
Related
GitHub Page with technical details, data, plots: Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) Analysis
Social Security Online Verification (SSOLV) Service, American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), 2024. Shows technical documentation titles only “available to jurisdiction and federal members.”
Maine Law Enforcement Officials Report ‘Uptick’ in Fake Social Security Numbers, Breitbart, Elizabeth Weibel, June 2, 2024.
DMV facilities across US experience network outage after ‘loss in cloud connectivity’, KSNT, March 21, 2024.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to the Lone Racoon, Jeff O'Donnell, for his pioneering work on HAVV data. See Jeff’s comments about HAVV in his video “Fingerprints of Fraud,” Chapter 1 - The Voter Rolls starting at 17:28. O’Donnell’s 2023 report: 2020 HAVV Lookup National Analysis.