A Eureka Springs resident who had lived at the same location for more than 30 years recently received a two-part blue postcard that said she had 10 days to verify her address or her voter registration would be marked inactive. The resident was concerned about putting her personal information including phone numbers, address and date of birth on the back of a postcard that could possibly fall into the wrong hands. And she questioned why the information was being mailed to a P.O. Box in Searcy, which is not in Carroll County.
Across the country, there have been concerns about voter suppression of low-income and/or minority voters who tend to vote for Democrats. The Washington Post ran a story April 17 titled, “Republicans boldly explore new frontiers of voter suppression.” But Carroll County Clerk Connie Doss said that the blue postcards are legitimate and there is no effort to take away anyone’s right to vote.
Doss said the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), also known as the Federal Motor Voter Act, requires verification that voters have residency and the blue postcards sent out a couple of months ago are part of what they call their odd year mailing.
“There aren’t as many elections during this cycle,” Doss said. “The cards are mailed out in order to update records. We put information on the local radio station making sure that everyone was aware that these little blue postcards going out in the mail were not junk and not to toss them. They are perfectly legal. If you haven’t voted in a full presidential cycle, then we send these cards out to make sure you are still at the same address. We are just updating records to make sure you are in same location. We have gotten several back where folks have passed away.”
Doss said there are safeguards even if, as in this case, it appears that the mail took six or eight weeks to arrive. Although this voter had been deemed inactive on the voter registration rolls, Doss said the resident could still mail in the postcard. If privacy is a concern, a piece of tape could be used to close the postcard which had a line between two postcards to detach the card to be mailed back from the card containing information about the request.
Doss said the voter was flagged by the computer because she had only voted once, and that was in 2016. The reason for a Searcy P.O. Box is that it what is being used by an outside company that does similar work in a number of counties.
“It is a standard card that the company sends,” she said. “If you don’t want to add personal information, you could just mail it back and check the box that says the address information is correct. Another alternative is to walk into the County Clerk’s office in Eureka Springs or bring it over here to the office in Berryville.”
Even if the voter had not discovered the problem until she went to vote again, she could have voted and later provided verification of her residency. The next presidential election primary is March 2020.
Doss said it is more efficient and cost effective to have the third-party company take care of gathering the information to make sure residency is current.
“They print all those cards, and send them by bulk mail,” Doss said. “Also, when those cards come back, they process them. When I get them back, they have already been sorted and we make adjustments on the system. The previous clerk did that same thing that I did and many clerks do it throughout the state. We are not kicking her off the voter rolls. We are updating our records as required by the NVRA.”
To check on your voter registration status, call the Carroll County Clerk at (870) 423-2022. You can also go to voterview.org, and look up your registration status by putting in your name, birthdate and county. That site also shows sample ballot for the most current election cycle.