Last Updated: 12/12/2023
An Overview of NCOA Maintenance
The Texas statute governing biennial list maintenance allows voter address changes to be supplied by an NCOALINK licensee of the USPS in lieu of a mass mailing. Address changes from NCOA vendors are recorded in voter records as third-party address changes.
The complete list of Active and PreReg voters plus address must be submitted to the NCOA vendor, not just those who have had no activity. The exception report returned by the vendor will contain address changes for the entire Active-voter roster. Although this is likely to result in more data entry than a mailing, you can be confident that your Active-voter addresses will be as up-to-date as possible for the next election cycle.
To work with an NCOA vendor and process the data they
provide:
- Prepare a file of voters for delivery to the vendor. This procedure is explained in Prepare a File of Voter Addresses for an NCOA Vendor.
- After you receive the vendor's file of address changes, load the NCOA data into a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet, following the format described in NCOA Spreadsheet Format. This step is not performed using Voter Focus, but it is a necessary prerequisite for Voter Focus to process the NCOA data.
- Import the data from the spreadsheet to schedule an Address Confirmation Notice be sent to each voter with a valid address change.
