East Twin Cities

After the waves of voter fraud claims during the last presidential election, VoteRef.com's goal is to provide voter transparency. 

On its home page, the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF) shows a map of the U.S. with some of the states filled in red. Clicking on a state brings you to a new webpage that shows voting locations within the state, to name a few features.

“By providing the public with access to the nation’s voter rolls, and illuminating discrepancies in the data, VRF is making the public aware that state election authorities have work to do to ensure the voter rolls are accurate and up-to-date,” Gina Swoboda, executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation, said in a release.

The nationwide concern of voter discrepancies can become problematic. Hans von Spakovsky, a political writer, wrote “without the assurance that all legal votes are counted — and all illegal votes are weeded out — trust in our government dissipates.”

“Full transparency into election records and results is needed to restore faith in our elections process,” VRF wrote in a release. “The work being done by VRF continues to highlight the need to ensure accurate voter rolls are being maintained, and to provide the public access to these rolls so that they may search the data and report errors to election officials.”

Minnesota, South Dakota and Oregon joined VRF’s list of states it collects voter data from. 

“Our quest to build a nationwide database continues, and as it grows – with nearly 40% of the country’s population now included, its usefulness increases exponentially,” Swoboda said in a release. “South Dakota and Oregon are vastly different states, but they fit together as puzzle pieces in this innovative effort.”

At the beginning of February, the VRF added the state of Minnesota to its online voter registration database called VoterRef.com, as reported in a recent press release on the site. This addition brings national coverage to 34% of the U.S. population.

Minnesota was the 16th state to be added to the database behind Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. The site has a goal to complete the database with all 50 states by the end of 2022.

Through the process of reviewing certified election data, the database can show the discrepancy between the number of voters and the number of casted votes. Detected discrepancies indicate the need for better record-keeping and accountability.

There is reportedly a wide range of discrepancy among states, VRF states in its release. The discrepancy in the state of Minnesota is 48,328 votes or 1.42%. Yet, in Florida, the discrepancy is 158,319 and in North Carolina, it is 42.

Swoboda is hopeful about the future of the database.

“Minnesota represents a significant addition to our website and we’re excited that our efforts are well on track to complete this nationwide database in 2022,” she said.