If I payed the Library to do a half an hour search on the electoral roll what do I get?

Question

I know it just tells me people that have voted but do they send me print outs? through e-mail, do I get to give as many addresses and they fit it all in to half an hour? I cant do it online as I need 1949

Answer 1

If you are looking for just one or two people in the UK, have you tried www.192.com to see if they have a listed phone number?

Answer 2

What do you want to find out?   Ancestry.com has some voter registrations online, they can be searched by last name and place of registration.  Just asking for a general search, without being more specific, is only going to get you reams and reams of paper printouts.

If you searched for, oh, lets say,  John Smith, age 28, Joplin, MO, 1950. - you'd probably get a yes or no answer within seconds.

On the other hand, if you searched for John Smith, age unknown, state unknown, 1950 - You'd get about 11,000 possibles.

I found my grandfather on the voter registration list, plus his street address, his political party, his neighbors, and his occupation.  So it also depends on what kind of information the registration rolls collected and what got saved to the index you are searching.

The electoral rolls are something different, I believe.  That has to do with the electoral college and would be the recorded votes of which candidate they voted for.  I don't know that they even have addresses listed.

Answer 3

UK answer.

You would need to go to the *archives library* to get the information from a 1949 electoral register, any electoral register pre the year 2000 is archived. Here in Nottingham, for £25:00  the archivist will do eight searches for you in a one hour time period. If they don't get a result for any of the eight searches, you would have to pay a further £25:00, there isn't a price reduction for an unsuccessful search.

Answer 4

Like itsjustme, I going to assume that you are in the UK.

First thing I hope you realise is that the electoral roll is and always has been searchable by ADDRESS and not by surnames.  This is fine in small villages where it is quite easy to search the entire local area for all instances of the same name, but a lot more difficult in large cities and conurbations like Manchester or London where families would have moved around a lot more.  To find someone in the electoral roll largely means that you need to already have an address to work with, otherwise any search could take a long time indeed, especially if you have a common surname.

Secondly of course, the electoral roll doesn't really give out much information.  Ages for example don't appear on the record, just people old enough to vote, not how old they actually are.  Also relationships won't be mentioned, you'll just have to guess from the page.  I would expect that they will send you the photocopies in the post.  As to how many requests they can fit into half an hour depends on what kind of information you can provide them in the first place.  You'll have to pay even if they find nothing.  I won't argue with itsjustme on the pricing format.  Anywhere between £20 and £25 for an hours research is the going rate.

One suggestion I do have is possibly to try a website called Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (raogk.org or similiar) who have volunteers across the world who go to local libraries and record offices and do look-ups for others out of the goodness of their heart and only charge minimal rates for their time and copies.  That way may be cheaper if you have lots of things that need checking and assuming that there is a volunteer near you.  Just don't expect too much from the electoral roll.  I've got several copies from the 1900s through to the 1970s and they are not that interesting, believe me!!