Are voter records public information?

Factual Questions
1

On the face of it, this question seems nutty, but I’ve heard/read too many times of a politician (e.g. Ahnold) running for office and a journalist reporting that s/he has only voted three times in the past 24 years–“the last three elections, voting for the GOP candidate.”

How would they know this, unless the candidate agreed to release his record, or the possibility that gaining illegal access to voter records is not difficult. Yes, some places require one to declare a party preference when registering (for primaries, I suppose), but these declarations are not binding.

2

I believe that you can check voter rolls to see if the person in question cast a ballot.

This would make sense so you can guard against fraud. You want to make sure people don’t vote twice.

3

No. Nobody records or maintains a list of who voted for which candidates. All the state knows is whether you voted at all, and that information is a matter of public record.

You’re probably confused by hearing that a particular voter voted in a particular party’s primary. If a state requires partisan registration to vote in a primary, or requires you to declare a party preference to get a primary ballot, then that information will be recorded and available to the public as well.

4

Records that you voted are public information, and it’s common for political parties & candidates to get this information. I’ve worked with it in the past.

It’s very valuable to a campaign to identify likely voters, and the best predictor of that is how regularily they’ve voted in the past. When I see someone who has voted in every single election, (primary & general, city, state, or federal) for the past 10 years, I know it’s really worthwhile to target that voter.

You don’t know who (which party) they actually voted for, though (except in states that require party registration in primaries). That isn’t in the state records.

But political parties have volunteers who call the regular voters, and survey them about their voting preferences, and use that to rank them as solid or leaning toward either party, or independent. Then the party will match their files of solid party supporters with the voter registration files, to make sure that their supporters get the information from their candidates.