Last Update: April 23, 2014 |
Regular maintenance on your voter registration database should be a part of your normal county procedures. This topic provides an outline of when list-maintenance activities should be done. Some of these are mandated by state statute; others can be performed when suggested below or at the time when it makes sense for your county.
Florida law requires that any mail returned undeliverable by the U.S. Postal Service should be recorded in the voter's record as undeliverable mail. If an address-change-notice accompanies the undeliverable mail, see About Third-Party Address Changes.
The law also requires that when a voter responds to a final notice or address confirmation request, their response should be noted in their record.
Process FVRS matches for deceased voters and duplicate records.
Activate your 18-year-old voters.
Inactivate voters who have had undeliverable mail and have been inactive since then.
Run the Certification of Address List Maintenance Activities and the Certification of Eligibility Records Maintenance reports for information needed on the forms provided by the State.
How often these procedures are performed depends on your county.
Send final notices to voters who have been scheduled for them. Note that any activity by a voter after a final notice has been scheduled will automatically unschedule the final notice.
Approximately 30 days after sending the final notices, inactivate the non-responsive voters.
Convert Ineligible voters to Deleted status. (Available but not required.)
Florida statute requires that the following list maintenance activity take place in odd-numbered years:
Convert voters who have been Inactive for two general elections to Ineligible status
Do one of the following:
Send non-forwardable mail (such as address confirmation requests or voter information cards) to all voters. Any mail returned by the Postal Service can then be processed as undeliverable. If there is no third-party address change, the voter is scheduled for a final notice.
Send an Address Confirmation Request to Active voters who have had no activity for two years. Any of these notices returned by the Postal Service can then be processed as undeliverable mail. If there is no third-party address change, the voter is scheduled for a final notice.
Export your voter list for National Change of Address (NCOA) processing by an NCOA vendor. Any address differences reported by the NCOA vendor can then be recorded as a third-party address change. See An Overview of NCOA Maintenance for more about this process.
Remember that voter activity by a voter for whom a final notice has been scheduled will automatically unschedule the final notice.