Despite service issues, the post office is key to voter list maintenance in Georgia

Key takeaways:

• Georgia elections officials rely heavily on the unreliable post office to ensure “clean” voter rolls
• The USPS has been a part of list maintenance procedures since we started keeping registration lists
• Some federal lawmakers have raised concerns about the postal service’s poor performance, particularly in metro Atlanta

(ExpressTelegraph.com) — Georgia elections officials rely heavily on the unreliable post office to ensure “clean” voter rolls, which they contend are “the cleanest voter rolls of any state in the country.”

That’s even despite the United States Postal Service’s abysmal service record in metro Atlanta and Georgia, a record so bad it’s caught the attention of a U.S. senator from the state.

Consider the case of a DeKalb County voter who has lived at the same address for years and has cast a ballot in most, if not all, elections for decades.

The voter contacted ExpressTelegraph.com about a concern with their voter registration status, which has recently toggled back and forth between active and inactive. The on-again, off-again change apparently stems from the post office’s failure to deliver an election document.

“The USPS has been a part of list maintenance procedures since we started keeping registration lists,” Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told ExpressTelegraph.com via email. “Their problems, however, are recent.”

Hassinger said that if a county office mails a document to a voter, such as a precinct card, and it is returned as “undeliverable,” the county sends another correspondence alerting the voter that they’re going to be moved to inactive status if they don’t respond to the second letter.

“That’s good list maintenance,” Hassinger said. “Being moved to inactive status is not an inconvenience for any voter, who can still vote just as easily as before, and will be moved back to active status as soon as they vote.”

Election officials point out that if the first letter is returned, the procedure is to notify the voter and that they are not removing the voter from the rolls. Instead, simply moving them into inactive status and notifying them of the change in their status.

“If the second letter isn’t returned, it could have been forwarded, ignored by the voter, or thrown away by a new resident,” Hassinger said. “It’s not proof that the voter’s address hasn’t changed.”

Hassinger said that if an election official has a voter’s phone number or email, the official can contact a voter using one of those methods. However, he added that the address is the only piece of data used to assign that voter to a precinct and that every voter record has, which is why officials use it.

“Any database is a static snapshot -but people are not,” Hassinger added. “They move, they die, they change their names, update their driver’s licenses, get married or become felons every day. We keep up with more than 8.2 million voters in Georgia. We’ve got the cleanest voter rolls of any state in the country, and the returned mail notification process is just one way we keep it that way.”

Ongoing concerns

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, and U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Georgia, are among the federal lawmakers have repeatedly raised concerns about the postal service’s poor performance in metro Atlanta. In August, Ossoff blamed the postmaster general for transitioning to a new regional distribution center model anchored at the new Regional Processing and Distribution Center (RPDC) in Palmetto, Georgia, while undertaking other changes throughout metro Atlanta.