State mailing voters for registration list ‘cleaning’

Did you find an unexpected postcard in your mailbox recently? Hoosier voters are receiving the tidy black-and-white registration mailers as part of routine voter list “maintenance,” according to Secretary of State Diego Morales’ office.

“One of my top priorities is to clean the voter rolls,” Morales said in a news release Tuesday. “These postcards help ensure more accurate voter registration lists on a county and statewide level. This update will give us a clearer picture of voter turnout and protecting the integrity of our elections.”

If the name is correct, residents don’t have to take any action for an initial card. But if addressed to someone else, the card instructs recipients to write “return to sender” on the front and put it back in the mail.

If the U.S. Postal Service can’t deliver a card, the service will send a second card to a forwardable address on file. That second mailer will ask a voter to confirm or update the address, or cancel a voter registration entirely, by filling out and returning the card. It’ll have pre-paid postage.

Morales’ office noted the list update is required by state and federal law as “part of ongoing effort to identify outdated, duplicate, and inaccurate voter registrations.” The office’s bipartisan Indiana Election Division conducts statewide maintenance every two years, in between federal elections, according to a spokeswoman.

County voter registration boards can cancel voter registrations flagged during the process, but only if that registration isn’t used to vote in two successive federal elections, according to the release.

“The intention and design of voter list maintenance is to identify inaccurate, outdated, duplicate registrations, not to cancel registrations of voters,” spokeswoman Lindsey Eaton wrote to the Capital Chronicle.

Hoosier voters can also fix or update their registrations online, or in person at a local county clerk’s office. While federal law requires the postcard method, Eaton said Morales was looking to do more.

“As Indiana’s Chief Elections Officer, I am committed to making sure Hoosiers are confident at the polls,” Morales concluded in the release. “We will continue to look for creative ways for voters to update their registration.”

This story has been updated with comments from the Office of the Secretary of State.