FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject US Voter Records

Purpose
The purpose of this project is to have a "Voting Records" page for every state in the United States.

Task List
Voting Records Task List

Instructions
 Open the task list, and place your name next to the state that you want to do. Go to the state page and click on the Voter Records link in the Sidebar. It might be red, but that's okay, it just means the page hasn't been created yet. If the link is red, copy the following code onto the page. If the page already exists, replace the code that is already on the page with the following code. ==Online Resources== ==Voting Rights History== *By 1856: Universal white male suffrage *1870: The 15th Amendment is passed and prohibits restricting suffrage based on race *(only for Southern states)Early 1890s: Jim Crow Laws passed to revoke African-Americans right to vote *YEAR: Women are given the right to vote *(only for Southern states)1965: The Voting Rights Act passes; African-Americans are given back the right to vote ==What Can be Found in the Records== For more information about how Voter Records can help your genealogical research see United States Voting Records. Voting records often contain: *Name *Birth place *Residence *Years living in city, county, state *Whether naturalized, date, court ==How to Find Voter Records== Most voter records were kept on the county level (for New England states this should be town level). To see what FamilySearch has for your county (town) of research follow these steps: *Go to the FamilySearch Catalog and in the place field type in STATE *Go to United States, STATE *Once there, click on "Places within United States, STATE" *Select the county that contains your town of interest *(only for New England states)Once there, click on "Places within United States, STATE, county that contains your town" *(only for New England states)Select your town of interest *If FamilySearch has voter records for your county, they will be under "Voting Registers" ==References== Replace STATE with the name of the state you are working on. For example if I was editing the Maryland Voting Records Page the code would like this: ==Online Resources== ==Voting Rights History== *By 1856: Universal white male suffrage *1870: The 15th Amendment is passed and prohibits restricting suffrage based on race *(only for Southern states)Early 1890s: Jim Crow Laws passed to revoke African-Americans right to vote *YEAR: Women are given the right to vote *(only for Southern states)1965: The Voting Rights Act passes; African-Americans are given back the right to vote ==What Can be Found in the Records== For more information about how Voter Records can help your genealogical research see United States Voting Records. Voting records often contain: *Name *Birth place *Residence *Years living in city, county, state *Whether naturalized, date, court ==How to Find Voter Records== Most voter records were kept on the county level (for New England states this should be town level). To see what FamilySearch has for your county (town) of research follow these steps: *Go to the FamilySearch Catalog and in the place field type in Maryland *Go to United States, Maryland *Once there, click on "Places within United States, Maryland" *Select the county that contains your town of interest *(only for New England states)Once there, click on "Places within United States, Maryland, county that contains your town" *(only for New England states)Select your town of interest *If FamilySearch has voter records for your county, they will be under "Voting Registers" ==References==  If you are doing a New England state; which is defined as Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont; delete the two instances of "(only for New England states)." If you are doing a state that is not in New England, delete the entire entry that are only for New England states. For example the new code for Maryland after this step would be: ==Online Resources== ==Voting Rights History== *By 1856: Universal white male suffrage *1870: The 15th Amendment is passed and prohibits restricting suffrage based on race *(only for Southern states)Early 1890s: Jim Crow Laws passed to revoke African-Americans right to vote *YEAR: Women are given the right to vote *(only for Southern states)1965: The Voting Rights Act passes; African-Americans are given back the right to vote ==What Can be Found in the Records== For more information about how Voter Records can help your genealogical research see United States Voting Records. Voting records often contain: *Name *Birth place *Residence *Years living in city, county, state *Whether naturalized, date, court ==How to Find Voter Records== Most voter records were kept on the county level (for New England states this should be town level). To see what FamilySearch has for your county (town) of research follow these steps: *Go to the FamilySearch Catalog and in the place field type in Maryland *Go to United States, Maryland *Once there, click on "Places within United States, Maryland" *Select the county that contains your town of interest *If FamilySearch has voter records for your county, they will be under "Voting Registers" ==References== If you are doing a Southern state; which is defined as Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia; delete the two instances of "(only for Southern States)." If you are not doing a Southern state delete the entire entries. For instance, after this step, the code for Maryland would now look like this: ==Online Resources== ==Voting Rights History== *By 1856: Universal white male suffrage *1870: The 15th Amendment is passed and prohibits restricting suffrage based on race *Early 1890s: Jim Crow Laws passed to revoke African-Americans right to vote *YEAR: Women are given the right to vote *1965: The Voting Rights Act passes; African-Americans are given back the right to vote ==What Can be Found in the Records== For more information about how Voter Records can help your genealogical research see United States Voting Records. Voting records often contain: *Name *Birth place *Residence *Years living in city, county, state *Whether naturalized, date, court ==How to Find Voter Records== Most voter records were kept on the county level (for New England states this should be town level). To see what FamilySearch has for your county (town) of research follow these steps: *Go to the FamilySearch Catalog and in the place field type in Maryland *Go to United States, Maryland *Once there, click on "Places within United States, Maryland" *Select the county that contains your town of interest *If FamilySearch has voter records for your county, they will be under "Voting Registers" ==References== Replace the "ST" in " " with the state's postal code. If you are unsure what the state's postal code is, you can find them here. So, after this step, my code for Maryland would now look like the following: ==Online Resources== ==Voting Rights History== *By 1856: Universal white male suffrage *1870: The 15th Amendment is passed and prohibits restricting suffrage based on race *Early 1890s: Jim Crow Laws passed to revoke African-Americans right to vote *YEAR: Women are given the right to vote *1965: The Voting Rights Act passes; African-Americans are given back the right to vote ==What Can be Found in the Records== For more information about how Voter Records can help your genealogical research see United States Voting Records. Voting records often contain: *Name *Birth place *Residence *Years living in city, county, state *Whether naturalized, date, court ==How to Find Voter Records== Most voter records were kept on the county level (for New England states this should be town level). To see what FamilySearch has for your county (town) of research follow these steps: *Go to the FamilySearch Catalog and in the place field type in Maryland *Go to United States, Maryland *Once there, click on "Places within United States, Maryland" *Select the county that contains your town of interest *If FamilySearch has voter records for your county, they will be under "Voting Registers" ==References== Replace YEAR with the year that women got the right to vote in your state. For all states except the following, it will be 1920. The exceptions are as following:</li> <ol> Wyoming: 1869</li> Utah: 1870</li> Colorado: 1893</li> Washington: 1869</li> Montana: 1887</li> Idaho: 1896</li> California: 1911</li> Arizona: 1912</li> Kansas: 1912</li> Oregon: 1912</li> Alaska: 1913</li> Illinois: 1913</li> Nebraska: 1917</li> Ohio: 1917</li> Indiana: 1917</li> North Dakota: 1917</li> <li>Rhode Island: 1917</li> <li>Iowa: 1919</li> <li>Maine: 1919</li> <li>Minnesota: 1919</li> <li>Missouri: 1919</li> <li>Tennessee: 1919</li> <li>Wisconsin: 1919</li> </ol> So after this step, my code for Maryland will look like the following: ==Online Resources== ==Voting Rights History== *By 1856: Universal white male suffrage *1870: The 15th Amendment is passed and prohibits restricting suffrage based on race *Early 1890s: Jim Crow Laws passed to revoke African-Americans right to vote *1920: Women are given the right to vote *1965: The Voting Rights Act passes; African-Americans are given back the right to vote ==What Can be Found in the Records== For more information about how Voter Records can help your genealogical research see United States Voting Records. Voting records often contain: *Name *Birth place *Residence *Years living in city, county, state *Whether naturalized, date, court ==How to Find Voter Records== Most voter records were kept on the county level (for New England states this should be town level). To see what FamilySearch has for your county (town) of research follow these steps: *Go to the FamilySearch Catalog and in the place field type in Maryland *Go to United States, Maryland *Once there, click on "Places within United States, Maryland" *Select the county that contains your town of interest *If FamilySearch has voter records for your county, they will be under "Voting Registers" ==References== <li>Now that the code is finished, you need to find what voter records are available online for your states. The first place that we will look is FamilySearch Historical Records</li> <li>Go to the FamilySearch Historical Records page here</li> <li>Click on the "Browse All Published Collections" button at the bottom of the page</li> <li>Type in "Vot" into the "Filter by Collection Title" field</li> '''Note this screenshot was taken in March 2020 and may be out of date by the time you work on your page. Make sure to do this step for yourself.''' <li>If you see your state on the list of Voter Records, add it under the ==Online Resources== heading in the following style: *STARTING YEAR-ENDING YEAR : at FamilySearch - index and images <li>We'll replace the STARTING YEAR and ENDING YEAR with the years listed in the collection title.</li> For example, if I was adding "Maryland, Kent County, Voter Registration Records, 1853-1898" to the wiki, I would replace the years with the years in the title in the following way: *1853-1898 : at FamilySearch - index and images <li>We'll also replace the NAME OF RECORD COLLECTION with the title.</li> So, the code for this collection that I am adding for Maryland would now look like this: *1853-1898 : at FamilySearch - index and images <li>The last thing we need to replace is RECORD NUMBER this is found in the URL on the collection page. So, to find this click on the link to the collection in the list of Historical Record Collections on FamilySearch, where we filtered by "Vot." Once on the collection's page, there will be a number at the end of the URL. Copy this number and paste it over RECORD NUMBER.</li> So keeping with the Maryland example, I would copy 2100301 that is at the end of the URL and place it in the RECORD NUMBER spot of the template: My code for this collection would now look like this: *1853-1898 : at FamilySearch - index and images <li>The last thing we need to do is see if Ancestry.com has any online voting record collections. The first step is to go to theAncestry.com Card Catalog. It will ask you to sign in, if you do not have an Ancestry account yet, contact Taylor.</li> <li>Then type "Voter" in the "Title" search bar. It should look like this</li>: <li>Click on the collection that you want to add. We will add Ancestry.com collections in the following style: *STARTING YEAR-ENDING YEAR : [recordcollectionurl RECORD COLLECTION TITLE] at Ancestry.com - index and images For instance if I was adding the "New York, New York, Voter List, 1924" onto the New York Voter Record page my code would look like the following: *1924 : New York, New York, Voter List, 1924 at Ancestry.com - index and images <li>Once you have finished looking for online collections at FamilySearch and Ancestry.com. (There may not be any collections for your state. That's okay.) Save the page and fill in the date completed on the task list. Then go on to the next state page that you would like to do.</li> </ol>