Are You Ready to Support Vote-By-Mail?
April 30, 2020   Dave Lewis

It seems inevitable now that voting through the mail is going to play a critical role in this year’s election.  Running an election through vote-by-mail is a very different proposition than absentee ballots.  This presents an enormous opportunity for mail service providers across the country, as well as a big challenge for the entire industry.  Elections are generally administered by counties, of which there are 3,143 across the country, not counting territories.  The average county has a little over 100,000 residents, of whom about 62,000 are registered voters. For small counties, absentee ballots are generally done by hand by county staff, or election workers.  A few hundred, or even a couple thousand, can be managed this way.  In most counties, you can request a ballot online and it will be mailed to you.  In many counties, this is an entirely manual process.  As often as not, the address is exactly as provided by the voter – not ZIP+4 or standardization – much less barcodes.  Scale this up to a mailing to all of the registered voters in a county and the task gets daunting. That’s where MSP’s can step in, and will. Of course, vote-by-mail entails mailing ballots to voters, in many states a bewildering variety of languages and variations.  The data management and personalization skills of an MSP will be essential.  There also has to be a provision for the mailing in of the ballot.  All of this is subject to intense scrutiny by candidates, parties, and election officials. Tracking mail, both the outbound mailing of the ballots and the inbound of the votes coming in, may be required to ensure the integrity of the vote.  SnailWorks has powerful proven tools designed specifically for tracking election mail, and sharing the tracking results with both election officials and the voter.  Now is the time to make sure you have solid mail tracking in place and the methods to process the election mail near you.   The government has already budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars for vote-by-mail, so ability to perform may be more important than a low price. Learn more about SnailWorks election solution at http://Campaign-Track.com.

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