Blockwalking for "unregistered voters" in Harris County

Time is getting tight: October 9 is the deadline to register to vote ahead of the 2018 election. So despite the fact that its creation was a feat of patience and persistence and coding creativity, I shan't waste too much time introducing the content. 

This specific dataset covers those 198,256 single family homes in Harris County that do not have a registered voter at the address (according to public records, as of 8/23/18). You can download the zipped XLS here.

The addresses are listed by precinct. The addresses are separated out by state Senate district, and the crosswalk on the top tab will help you figure out which tab(s) you'll need for your purposes. These are the column headers and their definitions.

• precinct: Precinct where the address is located (there are 1012 in the county). I highly recommend the interactive map of precincts that I found while perusing the Harris County Voter Registrar website. See image below, or at the URL. 
• site_addr: The site's address: number, street, and unit number (sometimes).
• city,zip, streetName: Hopefully self-explanatory.
• propType: single family homes, as our team identified by various fields associated with the account in the Harris County Appraiser District database(s).
• saleDate: Date of the most recent sale of the property.
• ownerOccupied: Educated guess about whether the owner of the property lives at the address. Basically, whether the "mail-to" address on the HCAD file matches the location of the property site.
• RVhere: Is there a Registered Voter here? As of 8/23/18.
• hcad_account: HCAD account number (public record, from HCAD).
• tx_house: Texas legislative district associated with the precinct, as of 2018.
• tx_senate: Texas senate district associated with the precinct, as of 2018.
• us_house: US Congressional district associated with the precinct, as of 2018.

In closing, two helpful tips and two caveats:

• This file is too big for Google Sheets, so don't take it personally if you are having trouble opening it! Once you click the link above, click the "download" icon towards the top right of the screen and save it to your own computer. Then you should be able to unzip the file using your computer's already-installed software... and then open the XLSX using Excel or any other software (Apple has the "Numbers" program, or you could try "LibreOffice" if you're going the open-source route).
• YouTube has great tutorials for Excel users if you need more information about how to manipulate this file once it's been downloaded locally and unzipped.
• From my perspective, the act of voter registration is a non-partisan activity... so I have no problem putting this information on a public-facing page. If our political 'opponents' (whatever that even means these days) want to get folks registered too, I can't argue with that. 
• Finally, a quick reminder that it is a criminal offense to use voter registration information in connection with advertising or promoting commercial products or services. (See Tex. Elec. Code Ann. §18.009.) So while this is not voter registration information, please be responsible users of voter-related information data obtained from HCAD and HCTAX and VoteTexas.

Happy Canvassing and VDVR-ing!

Interactive precinct map, which I found thru the HCTax Assessor's website

This work (including the XLS) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.