Voter registration records say oldest Kansas voter turns 971 this year!
But maybe a "0" should have been a "9" in her 1054 birth year?
This is the first in a series of articles about Kansas voter registration data analysis.
A few weeks ago I ran across a tongue-in-cheek posting on X by a group saying “Happy 133rd Birthday” to a registered voter in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
This group was attempting to use humor to educate the public about quality issues in voter registration data across the country.
Knowing for years that Kansas has birthdate irregularities in our voter rolls, I couldn’t help myself, and reposted with a Kansas context.
Wikipedia suggests the current oldest person in the world is 115 years old, but a review of Kansas voters shows 23 counties have voters older than the oldest human!
Perhaps voters 105 years old or older should be scrutinized to verify they haven’t moved on? There were 308 Kansas voters 105 or older on May 2nd.
New Kansas law from HB 2016 passed earlier this year allows “including funeral home online obituary notices as sufficient grounds for removal of a deceased voter from the voter registration books.” A simple Google often reveals online obituaries for those 105 or older.
On May 18th I sent an email to the Crawford County Clerk with information about the likely (accidental) double registration of the woman turning 971 years old this year.
This “very old” voter apparently re-registered on Oct. 7, 2024 and dropped her middle initial, which somehow created a duplicate voter registration at the same address. Her new registration shows birth year 1054, but her old registration shows 1954.
This highlights another problem that needs attention: at any given time in Kansas there are about 200 to 250 duplicate voter registrations, which seem to occur when a voter re-registers and the initial registration is not found. Often there are very minor changes between the duplicates. [But Johnson County appears to have two voters with exactly the same name and birthdate, but at different addresses and different voting patterns.]
I also sent the Crawford County Clerk details about nine other voters ranging in age from 106 to 115. I included links to online obits for five of the nine which took minutes to find using Google.
I have not yet received feedback from the Crawford County Clerk about these ten voters.
Four voters in the current voter file are not yet 18 years old, but all will be 18 and eligible to vote in the Nov. 2025 general election. Three are from Harvey County one is from Morton County.
Birthdate problem is 20 years old
New data analysts constantly re-discover birthdate problems in Kansas voter registration data.
The implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 required the Secretary of State to build a database of voter registration records for the 105 Kansas counties, which was completed statewide on Dec. 29th, 2005. This database is called ELVIS.
Prior to 2006 each of the 105 counties had their own voter registration system. There were 14 different voter registration / election management systems in use before the conversion according to the 2007 workshop slides above.
Years ago some counties did not record birthdate as part of the voter registration record, and some systems used special dates to signify an “unknown” birthdate. Sometimes only the birth year was recorded.
The current file has these old artifacts, like 21 birthdates that are Jan. 1 but years 1800 or 1801 or 1900 or 1901. These dates meant “unknown” in the old system but are treated as real dates in the current ELIVS.
So, relatively “good” data from the past became “bad” data after the conversion and is misinterpreted today.
Sources tell me that county clerks in 2005 were told not to worry about these conversion issues with dates.
But after 20 years isn’t it time that there is a serious attempt to improve data quality in the Kansas voter file with birthdates and all other data fields?
Voter data quality
Voter data files like many other government and corporate databases can accumulate all sorts of “bad data” if not actively managed.
Voter registration files in all states have a number of data quality problems that are being ignored. The good news for us is Wisconsin voter registration data is far, far worse than Kansas data. But that should not be an excuse to ignore our bad data.
Laissez-faire management of data results in a lot of bad data, which only builds up over the years.
Citizen feedback about bad data is often not desired and ignored by election officials. But, sometimes repeated feedback can get some things fixed.
In the May 2, 2025 voter data used for this article, there were three problems related to the 2020 census redistricting that should have been fixed in 2022.
2020 census redistricting still not complete
I only knew to check district assignments in the voter file in 2022 because it was a silent problem after the 2010 census.
Osage County has 295 voters in one precinct, who have not been assigned to any congressional district, county commission district, or school district in the state voter file. I have not received feedback from my May 5th email report to the Osage County Clerk — and a previous report on July 6, 2024. There was no response from the Osage County Commission Chair from my May 5th report. Has this problem been resolved?
Wilson County voters are assigned to senate district 14 in the voter file. The redistricting map for senate district 12 shows it contains all of Wilson County. I have not received responses for reports about this problem from emails to the Wilson County Clerk sent on March 23, 2023, Sept. 8, 2024, or May 5, 2025. Has this problem been resolved?
Scott County had a similar problem in assignment of a state senate district to voters. The voter file said voters were in senate district 33 when redistricting information showed they were in district 39. Email reports about the problem were sent to the county clerk on Sept. 8, 2024 and May 5, 2025. Scott County Clerk Marie Allen replied on May 6th: “I believe I have this fixed now.” Thank you, Ms. Allen. Problem solved.
Hope for data quality improvements?
Recently the Elections Division at the Secretary of State hired a new staff person who, among other duties, will address voter registration data issues.
We hope voter registration data quality improvements are on the Kansas horizon.
Related
Technical Analysis of Kansas Voter Registration File, GitHub.
Section 1, First Look.
My GitHub page hosts computational notebooks for analysis of Kansas voter registration data from a voter file, and some useful summary files that may interest voter integrity advocates. You can use free R notebook data science tools and a Kansas voter file to analyze the data yourself.
Protect Democracy bought Kansas voter registration data a total of 68 times from 2020 through 2022. In 2020 purchases were made in 14 consecutive weeks, mostly before the Nov. general election. In 2022 weekly purchases were made over a 27-week period starting months before the August primary election.
ROFL - Are you saying the 971 year old SHOWED UP?? They came and cast a vote? DID THEY?
WHY DOES THIS MATTER?:
Because you need a reaction.
Because you need to point fingers.
Because you need something to complain about.
JUST SO YOU KNOW - We only need to know who this is IF THEY VOTE. (you should do more research)
So THIS DOES NOT MATTER.
DOES NOT MATTER.