Culling Ineligible Voters from the Daily Absentee File—continued

In the updated software, the file will display the date when the voter became ineligible in the field “Absentee Request Canceled Date.” Candidates can then sort the file to ignore voters with a date in this field.

This imposes a slight twist on our traditional use of the “Canceled” concept. Within Voter Focus, “Canceled” is reserved for situations where the voter no longer wants an absentee ballot, regardless of their eligibility. Voters who become ineligible after making a request are not canceled; they simply do not receive a ballot envelope/label. Instead, they are reported as exceptions in absentee print runs. These exceptions typically include voters who:

• Are deceased.
• Moved out of the county.
• Belong to a party that has no races or issues on the ballot.
• Moved into a non-voting precinct.

In designing the update, we initially considered preventing ineligible voters from appearing in the file. Although this approach would have yielded cleaner files, we concluded that it might also cause concern among candidates if previously reported voters seemed to “disappear.” We opted instead to provide a more transparent file to parties and candidates.