California Voting Records

California voter registration records can help you locate most male citizens between the years of the federal censuses. The first voter registration records were county poll lists. Although poll lists were required by law after 1850, the earliest records are incomplete.

In 1866, poll lists were replaced by voter registers known as the Great Registers. Each voter was required to register with the county clerk, giving his full name, age, state or country of birth, occupation, and address. If naturalized, he was to declare the name of the court and the date when the naturalization took place. An 1872 law required all counties to print an alphabetical list of voters every two years. Since 1895, data on voters has been more detailed.

All but a few of the Great Registers are available at the California Section of the California State Library in Sacramento. Duplicate copies are at the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley, and also in county courthouses. Most are on microfilm at the Family History Library. For example, for San Francisco the library has 190 films that include the:


 * Great Registers, 1866-1898
 * Indexes, 1866, 1888-1904
 * Index of naturalized voters, 1850-1898

Other Published Sources
California Great Registers Online and Printed Resources This table displays information about online indexes and images of the Great Registers and Voter Registers for each county, including known years of publication. Other transcripts or indexes may be accessed through society or government websites, as well as printed or microfilmed records. This table is not exhaustive of all sources; but rather, is provided here as a resource to researchers. If you know of a Great Register or voter records resource not mentioned here, please contribute your information!

Ancestry® (www.ancestry.com). This website provides both digitized images and indexes, divided into two separate databases:


 * California, Voter Registers, 1866-1898
 * California, Voter Registrations, 1900-1968

Users can search by first and last name, event year, location, and keyword.

Various individuals, organizations, and societies have published online abstracts, transcriptions, indexes, and images of the great registers. A few examples of what you might find:


 * The Foreign-Born Voters of California in 1872 (www.jwfgenresearch.com/GR1872Index.htm). This useful statewide online database index created by Jim W. Faulkinbury, CG®, includes all foreign-born voters of California in 1872. The abstract includes full name, age, and place of birth of each voter. Full information can be ordered from his site for a small fee.


 * YubaRoots (www.yubaroots.com). This great website has available online transcriptions of Yuba County “Great Registers” and “Voting Records” for the period 1867 to 1930.


 * San Luis Obispo County Genealogical Society (www.slocgs.org). The society has an impressive collection of online indexes and images of San Luis Obispo County Great Registers and voter registration affidavits from 1867 to 1944.

To find online resources for a county of interest, try a Google search using the county name and “Great Registers” as keywords.

Printed and Microfilmed Resources
Some original manuscript registers have been destroyed, and information is only available in the printed versions. Many existing printed registers and indexes reside at the California State Library in Sacramento; some are housed at Bancroft Library at University of California in Berkeley.

Other indexes may be found in county courthouses, archives, or libraries. Most of the manuscript great registers and indexes are listed in the Guide to the County Archives of California (see Selected Bibliography).

Many printed indexes are available on microfilm through several repositories, including the California State Library in Sacramento and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City or through a local family history center.


 * The 1890 Great Register of Voters Index. The California State Genealogical Alliance produced a 3-volume index as a partial substitute for the destroyed 1890 Federal Census. This index includes 311,028 men living in California in 1890. This index was also published by Heritage Quest on CD-ROM.
 * San Francisco, California: 1890 Great Register of Voters. This particular index includes only those men living in the city and county of San Francisco in 1890. This volume may be helpful to those researching San Francisco before the great quake and fire in 1906 that destroyed many of the city’s records.

Copies of printed registers or indexes, especially those compiled from the 1890 Great Registers, may be located in libraries through WorldCat.

Affidavits of Registration.
Most early affidavits were destroyed, but some still exist in counties, usually archived by the county.