Last Updated: 12/12/2023

Process Undeliverable Mail and Third-Party Address Changes

This topic describes how to process undeliverable postal items and notices of a voter address change from third-party agencies.

Important:

For Undeliverable Mail Ballots—

Do not process an undeliverable Vote-By-Mail ballot as undeliverable mail unless the package contains a change-of-address notice from the Postal Service.
For undeliverable ballots without a third-party address change, follow the instructions in Process an Undeliverable Vote-By-Mail Ballot.
For ballots with an address change, refer the return as described in Process an Undeliverable Vote-By-Mail Ballot. Then, process the package as undeliverable mail with a third-party address change, as described below.

When the Postal Service is unable to deliver mail (other than mail ballots) to a voter and returns it to your office, it should be processed as undeliverable mail. In addition to undeliverable postal items, the following items should also be processed as undeliverable mail:

Jury notices with changes of address
Changes of address from an NCOA vendor that your county is not processing using the automated NCOA processing facility provided in Voter Focus.
HSMV lists of voters who have surrendered their Florida driver license in another state and have provided a new out-of-state address.

These items, plus undeliverable mail that includes a change-of-address notice, fall into the category of third-party address changes. Depending on the type of address change (residential or mailing, in-county, or out-of-county) the proper notice will be scheduled to be sent to the voter requesting confirmation of the address change. A log is posted to the voter's audit noting the address change and the notice(s) scheduled.

The processing of undeliverable mail for which there is no change of address schedules the voter to receive a Final Notice and adds an entry to their audit log that the notice is scheduled. When the notice is sent, a record of that event is added to the Comms tab in the voter's record. Should a Final Notice be returned as undeliverable, no further communications are scheduled for the voter, and the voter will be placed in the queue of voters who are ready to be made Inactive. Should the voter subsequently request a mail ballot or cast a ballot during an election, Voter Focus will remove them from the Inactive queue.

If a voter previously made an all-elections or FPCA Vote-By-Mail request, processing undeliverable mail with no change of address or an out-of-state address automatically triggers the cancellation of any outstanding Vote-By-Mail requests for future elections (unless a ballot has already been delivered) and sets the expiration date of the all-elections/FPCA request to today's date. The process also schedules a Cancelled Requests Notice to be sent to the voter.

To process undeliverable mail or a third-party address change: