A liberal political organization is sending hundreds of thousands of mail-in and absentee ballot applications to voters across the country in an apparent attempt to promote the voting method in states not automatically mailing the ballot applications themselves.
The “potentially misleading” mailings, which contain legitimate ballot applications but at first glance appear to many recipients appear to be from an official government source, have confused voters and peeved election officials.
Contrary to the organization’s own goal, it has repeatedly sent voters incorrect information. This week, hundreds of thousands of mailers in Virginia had incorrect election office addresses on prepaid return envelopes. Earlier in the summer, it sent thousands of North Carolina voters forms that were invalid because the group had partially filled them out. And in previous years, dead people and pets received voter registration forms from the group.
“Any time a third party group sends out a mass mailing to voters, we Directors of Elections get inundated with calls from concerned voters,” David Bjerke, who directs elections operations for the city of Falls Church, Virginia, told the Washington Examiner. His tone was sharper in a Thursday tweet: “It's not helpful to mail absentee by-mail apps en mass without checking w/ election offices who process them.”
