ANCESTRY - Australian electoral Rolls

[Pat Wade]

Hi,

With help from a lister I used the "Browse
Individual Records" function of the electoral
rolls which are great. But this now leads me to
another question.

Using this function I was able to bring up all
pages for a particular electoral district, and
easily find the same area in any of the years that
they have except.........

What I found was that some years had different
subdivisions and I wondered if maybe Ancestry may
have only done some of some years or if maybe some
are Federal and others State rolls.

Does anyone have any knowledge of why?

Thank you
Pat

[Michael A Lightfoot]

Pat Wade wrote:
>
> What I found was that some years had different
> subdivisions and I wondered if maybe Ancestry may
> have only done some of some years or if maybe some
> are Federal and others State rolls.
>

Two things.

Firstly, electoral boundaries, names of divisions, subdivisions, etc
changed over time and still do.

Secondly, until very recently (the late 1980s) Queensland had a separate
Electoral Roll which could vary enormously from the Federal one. I
believe in the past the states had their own rolls as well and of course
before federation they did.

--
====
Michael Lightfoot
Canberra, Australia
OPC Merther, Egloshayle & St Breock, Cornwall
see http://www.cornwall-opc.org
michael....@pcug.org.au
====

[Doug Laidlaw]

Ancestry hasn't got a clue! They won't acknowledge original BDM indexes, but
give their own version - with all its transcription errors - Quality Level
3, next best to a certificate. I just printed out a family tree with less
than 1000 people, including 40 pages of "Sources": endless repetitions of
the same waffle describing their indexes. Their Web site won't let me add
marriage references to a marriage event, and for individuals with multiple
marriages, the source addition always goes to the first marriage, even if I
have a later one on the screen. Just about an hour ago, they insisted that
a wife's baptismal details belonged to the husband. I bought FTM for 2011,
and it is just the Web site mess all over again.

I don't trust their data at all. It is no wonder the LDS didn't want to be
associated with them.

As regards Federal/State, I believe that nowadays, both use the same rolls.
I don't know how long that has been the case.

Doug, formerly a lawyer, and trained in sifting evidence.
--
Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.
-- Shakespeare, also Juvenal.