Handle Undeliverable Mail Ballots and Returns Unable to Be Processed by Mail Balloting Systems
Returned mail ballot envelopes that cannot be processed by your third-party mail-balloting system must be returned using the Return Ballots program in Voter Focus. That is, you should use the Return Ballots button on the Vote By Mail tab, rather than the
Ballot envelopes that must be processed generically include:
- Envelopes that could not be processed by the third-party system because their bar code was unreadable or the envelope was too crumpled to feed through the machine.
- Mail ballot packages returned by the Postal Service as Undeliverable Mail. Because these ballot packages were never opened by voters, they cannot be loaded into the third-party system for return processing.
- Mail ballots that were emailed or faxed to UOCAVA voters, and which were returned by email, fax, or regular mail.
To return these ballots, it will be necessary for the Voter Focus user to have the envelopes and emailed/faxed ballots physically in hand, which means they will be removed from the workflow for the returns processed by the third-party system and therefore will not have tray/batch numbers. For these ballots, the county should have a batch numbering procedure that prevents batch numbers being used for generic returns from conflicting with third-party system's tray/batch numbers. Voter Focus cannot ensure that the batch numbers will not conflict.
For more information, see Record the Return of Mail Ballots.
