A Citizen Voting Age by Race and Ethnicity (CVAP) special tabulation was originally created, by a data user’s request, from the Census 2000 long form and published in 2002 for use in voting rights analysis.

After the 2010 Census, at the request of the Department of Justice and starting in February of 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau began publishing an annual CVAP tabulation from the most recent American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates. The 2002 special tabulation and the subsequent ACS versions created starting in 2011, are all published down to the block-group level of geography.

In 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau will again publish the annual ACS 5-year CVAP produced from the 2015-2019 ACS in early February of 2021.

The Census Bureau suspended all work on the Post-2020 Census CVAP Special Tabulation on January 12, 2021 following the Executive Order on Ensuring a Lawful and Accurate Enumeration and Apportionment Pursuant to the Decennial Census. The Census Bureau had planned to produce this tabulation using 2020 Census and administrative records data and publish it to the census block level. On Jan. 21, 2021 the Census Bureau advised that it would reengage with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to confirm that the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) data produced from the American Community Survey (ACS) continue to meet its statistical needs. On Feb. 16, the Census Bureau received a letter from DOJ stating that the CVAP data from the ACS, on which it has traditionally relied, are adequate for its enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. DOJ did not request compilation or release of additional citizenship or CVAP data beyond this ACS data. 

NOTE: The CVAP special tabulation data is organized in the tabs below by the last year of the ACS 5-year span or the year of the Decennial Census, depending on whether ACS or Decennial data was used to produce the dataset. Please be aware this is not the same as the year of the data's publication. (Ex. 2018 Tab = 2014-2018 ACS 5-Year CVAP Estimates published in February of 2020)