Is there a country database where I can check my voting history?

Question

I'm curious to know m voting history.  But I can't find anything that has that.  There's several reasons why I would like to know my voting history:

1. To ensure I voted who I voted for.  I would of liked to verify this when I got home after the polls.  This is similar to getting a receipt at the store.

2.  To ensure I did or did not vote.  I would hate to think that if I registered (or even not registered) and did not vote, and by default, a vote is counted towards a party that I may or may not have registered to.  This also prevents a false vote if I was underaged or have no right to vote.

I feel like there's no verification for myself that my vote went where I voted.  It's not hard to get people's personal information, identity thieves do it all the time, and vote in my place.  If there was a way to verify our voting history, why hasn't that been applied yet?

StephenWeinstein · Answer

There is no country database.

Some of the states or counties have databases that you can check and some don't.

But none of the databases let you verify for whom you voted, because they don't keep track of that.  The database would say only whether or not you voted at all.

Tmess2 · Answer

There is no country database because elections are not run by the national government.  Instead, subject to some state supervision (e.g., which machines are approved for use in that state), elections are run at the local level.  In the majority of states, elections are run by a county official; but some states designate a different local government to run elections.

To get the information on which elections you voted in, you would need to check with your local election authority.  In most, but not all states, the record of who voted is subject to state open records law.  Depending on your state, if you voted in a primary, the record might indicate which party's ballot you took.

That information will not include who you voted for.  In all states, your actual ballot is secret and anonymous.  They do not know which of the hundreds or thousands of ballots voted in your precinct (or which mail-in ballot) was yours.  In most states, there is a random audit/partial hand recount of random races and precincts to assure that the machines accurately counted the votes from the paper/optic scan ballots, but it is impossible to determine if the voter filled out the ballot in the way that the voter intended (e.g., confused proposition 1 with proposition 2 and therefore voted no on proposition 1 rather than proposition 2).

Is there a country database where I can check my voting history?

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