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: To process mail ballots that are returned undeliverable, follow the procedure in Process Special Ballot Returns and Undeliverable Ballots.

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.

These items, plus undeliverable mail that includes a change-of-address notice, fall into the category of third-party address changes.

The processing of undeliverable mail schedules the voter to receive an Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice. When the notice is sent, a record of that event is added to the Comms tab in the voter's record. Should an Address Confirmation Notice/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 moved to the Suspense List. Should the voter subsequently request a mail ballot or cast a ballot during an election, Voter Focus will remove them from the Suspense List queue.

Processing undeliverable mail does not cancel any outstanding single election, all-elections, or FPCA Ballot By Mail requests that exist for future elections, regardless if there is or there is no change of address.

Settings in Document Maintenance

We recommend an elections administrator confirm the following settings are made in Document Maintenance:

  • An Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice is automatically scheduled by the following procedure when recording undeliverable mail for a voter who was sent a voter certificate as part of a mass mailing. This changes the voter's status to S1(I). For this reason, ensure the Send to Suspense option remains selected in Document Maintenance for the Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice type.
  • To include a barcode on documents that can be scanned to identify the voter and document type when mail is returned undeliverable, add the VoterIdNoticeType field in Document Maintenance.