DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

BOARD OF ELECTIONS
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20001-2745

September 29, 2016

Mr. David Grosso
At-large Member of the Council
Chairperson
Committee on Education
Council of the District of Columbia
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Suite 402
Washington, DC 20004
Dear Councilmember Grosso:
Thank you so much for your September 28, 2016 letter concerning a postcard that the
Board sent to certain individuals earlier this month advising these individuals to register
to vote or to confirm their voter registration status. We really appreciate the feedback
and notice. The short response is: we sent out approximately 74,000 notices to
individuals identified as unregistered District of Columbia citizens who are eligible to
vote. Anticipating that some individuals would receive the postcard in error, because no
process is perfect, the Board included the following language on the postcard: Already
registered? Please visit www.dcboee.org or call (202) 727-2525 to confirm your voter
registration. Included in the mailing were District of Columbia citizens who are actually
registered to vote, but for whom there were discrepancies with respect to certain
data between information in the national system database that we use and information in
our voter registry. The most common discrepancy is with respect to dates of birth; of the
74,000 individuals contacted, approximately 5,700 were individuals with default birth
dates. These individuals registered many years ago, at a time when registration did not
require voters to provide their dates of birth. Due to some confusion with the mailer, the
Board will send a clarifying notification acknowledging voter registration status, and
requesting updates to the voters profile. A more detailed explanation follows.
As you are aware, the Board has been a member of the Electronic Registration
Information Center (ERIC) since January 2014. ERIC is an interstate voter information
exchange program in which participating jurisdictions upload anonymized voter
registration, voter history, and Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) data into a single
database. Data-matching software compares the data, and facilitates the issuance of list
maintenance reports back to the member jurisdictions, allowing them to identify and
take the appropriate action with respect to duplicate voter registrations, voters who are
deceased, and voters who have moved within or outside of their jurisdictions.

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441 4th St., NW, Suite 250 www.dcboee.org Telephone (202) 727-2525 Fax (202) 347-2648

ERIC also allows the Board to identify individuals within the District of Columbia who
are potentially eligible to vote but are unregistered to vote. Pursuant to the Boards
membership agreement with ERIC, the Board is required to contact these individuals and
inform them of how they may register to vote within a certain timeframe prior to federal
general elections. In accordance with this requirement, the Board sent a postcard to
approximately 74,000 individuals identified by ERIC as eligible but unregistered.
Included in the list of 74,000 individuals to whom the postcard was sent were
approximately 5700 individuals who had been assigned default birth dates in the Boards
voter registry and thus did not match the dates of birth provided in the ERIC eligible but
unregistered data file. The reason for the default birth dates is that, prior to the enactment
of the Voter Registration Act of 1975 (December 16, 1975, D.C. Law 1-37, 2(3)-(5), 22
DCR 3426), there was no explicit requirement in District of Columbia law for a voter
registration applicant to provide his or her date of birth. The Voter Registration Act
contained a provision that required the Board of Elections to mail to qualified applicants
a nonforwardable registration notification form that included, among other things, the
applicants birth date. Accordingly, the BOEs voter registration application was
amended in 1976 to solicit birth dates. Because the BOE did not have birth dates for
voters who registered prior to 1975, each of these voters was assigned a default birth date
of 12/31/1800 in Integrity, the BOEs voter registration system, so as to indicate that that
particular data was missing. The inaccurate birthdates are generally those individuals
who registered prior to the requirement to provide a date of birth. Since there was a
discrepancy in the date of birth data for these individuals, they were not identified as
registered in the ERIC report identifying eligible but unregistered voters.
Voters have been contacting us, and accessing our website to confirm their registration
status. Voters with default birth dates who received the postcard have also been
providing us with accurate birth dates, but this was not the purpose of the postcard.
Rather, the purpose of the postcard was to ensure that all eligible citizens in the District
of Columbia have a meaningful opportunity to participate in democracy. Indeed, since
we mailed the postcard, there has been a pronounced spike in the number of voter
registration applications we have received, which means that more voters will be added
to the Districts voter registry in time for the upcoming election.
The postcard is but one step the Board has taken to encourage participation in the
electoral process. On Tuesday, September 28, 2016, the Board celebrated National Voter
Registration Day (NVRD). Through voter registration drives at One Judiciary Square and
Carlos Rosario International School, nearly 100 residents registered to vote for the first
time in the District. Dozens more confirmed their registration status, applied for absentee
ballots, tested our new voting equipment. We also regularly conduct voter education and
outreach activities at Advisory Neighborhood Commission meetings, civic association
meetings, naturalization ceremonies, community fairs, local high schools and colleges,
and correctional facilities.
We will continue to advise all eligible individuals to register to vote, to confirm their
voter registration status, and to keep their voter registration information current so that
they are prepared to participate in all elections in which they are eligible to participate.
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We will also contact the registered voters with default birth dates who received the
postcard to inform them that, while they are registered, their voter registration
information is inaccurate, and that they should provide us with the information
necessary to cure this inaccuracy. We certainly regret any inconvenience this has
caused any currently registered voter.
I hope this correspondence is responsive to your concerns. If you have any further
questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. I'm happy to meet with you
in person to discuss this further if you would like.
Sincerely,

D. Michael Bennett
Chairman

cc:

Hon. Kenyan McDuffie, Chairperson, Committee on the Judiciary