Move Voters to the Suspense List

Biennial List Maintenance

Monthly

An Active voter can be suspended (that is, have their status changed to Suspense List) when:

  • An Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice sent to the voter is returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable and the notice is recorded in VOTER REGISTRATION > Record Undeliverable Mail.

or

  • All of the following conditions are met:
    1. Mail from the elections office to the voter was returned by the USPS as undeliverable. Processing the undeliverable mail automatically schedules the voter to receive an Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice, and;
    2. The Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice was sent to the voter, and;
    3. The voter has had no voter activity, such as voting, requesting a mail ballot, or responding to the notice, within 30 days of the notice being sent.

The Move Voters to Suspense List program works by searching for:

  • All Address Confirmation Notices/Final Notices to Active voters returned as undeliverable in the past year.

  • All Address Confirmation Notices/Final Notices sent to Active voters more than 30 days ago and within one year of the "effective date," which is a date you specify when you start the run. Normally, the effective date should be today's date.

The Move Voters to Suspense List program finds all voters meeting these criteria and converts their status to S2(I), Suspense List. The program is typically run as part of the biennial list maintenance required by the State, but we recommend you run it on a monthly basis to save costs on mailouts going to Active voters. Some counties run Move Voters to Suspense List more frequently than monthly.

Note: This program does not remove the S1 reason code when it is appended to a voter's (I) status. This reason code applies when a voter certificate is sent to a voter as part of a mass mailing is returned undeliverable and recorded, or there is no response from a voter to an Address Confirmation Notice within 30 days.

The program eliminates those where there has been voter activity, such as voting or a response to the notice. Search results are displayed in an onscreen list. Review the list carefully to be sure there are no voters who should not be moved to the Suspense List.

If a voter has been unresponsive to an Address Confirmation/Final Notice but has an outstanding Ballot By Mail request, they will still appear on the list of voters to be moved to the Suspense List, although the list will not show that they have outstanding requests. We recommend you share the list with your Ballot By Mail coordinator so they can handle the requests in accordance with your county's procedures.

Users must have the permission MoveActiveToInactive to run the program.

  1. Go to LIST MAINTENANCE > List Maintenance Tasks > Move Voters to Suspense List.

  2. On the Voter Management dialog, in the Enter Effective Date field, you would typically accept the default, which is today's date. However, if you are running the program just prior to an election and you want voters to be marked as Suspense List in precinct registers so that poll workers can ask them for their address, enter the date of the election. Click OK.

  1. A list of the voters appears onscreen. Note that, so far, the voters have not been moved to the Suspense List.

Check the report to be sure the listed voters should be moved to the Suspense List. Once you convert voter statuses, there is no automated way to undo the run, so do not proceed if you believe there might be problems. Instead, save the report, click Cancel, and call VR Systems. Note that voters who have been unresponsive to the Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice but have outstanding Ballot By Mail requests will appear on the report and will be moved to the Suspense List when you click Update in step 4.

  1. To convert the status of the listed voters to Suspense, click Update.

Important: You should not click Update until you are certain that all voters listed should be suspended.

When the voters' status is converted, you will see the message Run Completed at the bottom of the Voters List Management dialog.