Why Some Voters Did Not Receive My Postcard

I have been hearing from voters who received my campaign postcard in the mail this week. To those who did not receive one, I am sharing an electronic copy here.

Unfortunately, several voters I intended to reach did not receive their postcards because their voter-registration records contained outdated Highway Contract Route (HCR) box numbers rather than their current 911 rural addresses. Those mailings were subsequently considered undeliverable by the U.S. Postal Service.

In other cases, voters had a physical address listed on their voter registration rather than a P.O. Box. While the physical address may be correct for identifying where they live, it is not necessarily a deliverable mailing address. In communities such as Martin, where residential mail delivery is not available unless you live on an established postal carrier route, the U.S. Postal Service cannot guarantee delivery to a physical street address. According to our local postmaster, if postal personnel recognize the individual and know which P.O. Box they use, the mail may still be placed in that box. However, that is not guaranteed and is at their discretion. When the mailing address does not meet USPS delivery requirements, the postcard can be considered undeliverable and returned to the sender.

The bottom line is that there appears to be a problem with how address information is being collected and maintained across our state database systems. If accurate mailing information is not being captured when voters update their information through the driver-licensing process, that information can result in outdated or incorrect addresses appearing on voter-registration records.

The old saying applies: garbage in, garbage out.

If elected, I will follow up with the new Secretary of State and the Department of Public Safety to determine why accurate address information is not consistently being reflected in voter-registration records and to seek solutions to correct the problem.

This matters because candidates invest significant amounts of their own money as well as contributions from supporters to communicate with voters. When inaccurate or outdated voter-registration addresses prevent campaign mailings from reaching their intended recipients, those resources are wasted—and candidates are unable to effectively communicate with the very voters they are trying to reach.

More importantly, accurate voter-registration records are important to the integrity and administration of our elections. We need to identify where these discrepancies are occurring and work to get our records cleaned up.

So, if you did not receive my postcard in the mail, here is an electronic copy. I would appreciate your vote on November 3rd.

Have a great day!