King County Elections Voter Challenge Letters

Background

Each election cycle there are voters whose ballots cannot be counted due to eight possible problems with their ballot. The Challenge Letter Program begins within days of ballots dropping into mail and runs daily until the election is certified. During the program, King County sends our factories secure batches of records daily (or more frequently). Trio Group accepts a data file each day over a 15-day period from Elections and within 24 hours mails one of 8 different letter templates directly to the voter to remedy the issue. We print and mail a letter to each record in English and up to four other languages.

Strategy

Our advance work includes printing all the materials including envelopes and letter shells, warehousing, fulfilling each job, and mailing. We produce the printed materials in bulk and store them at no charge to take advantage of unit price reductions to cover an entire year of expected mailings as estimated by Elections staff.

Each batch of challenge letters is printed in one of five languages based on the voter’s communication preferences.

Execution

The program begins within days of ballots being sent to voters and runs every day except Sunday until the election is certified, typically 3–4 weeks. Once our facilities receive the secure data file, we proof the inbound data within 2 hours to resolve any discrepancies or possible address problems. We 100% guarantee match every record. The data is segregated into eight categories, which have their own specific template letters, inserts and program materials that MUST mail within 24 hours of receiving the data per our service level agreement (SLA). Each mailed record is then uploaded to a secure website so voters can track the progress of their communication with elections. 

Small and/or special elections like those in Feb and April typically have a total of 3,000 records but for the primary and general election cycles this can rise to more than 15,000. The quantity of challenge letters needed each election depends on the number of ballots that are returned with one of eight possible issues. We also process in both English and four other languages.  The other languages are all very small quantities and the letters are digitally printed (both static and variable) on the fly as necessary. 

To ensure the best postage, we will often hold a data file that we received later in the day and combine it with another data file from the next day to raise our total mailing quantity. This helps us meet the minimum threshold for bulk postage rates and deliver better cost savings. This is common at the beginning and end of each 15-day period as incoming ballots are less concentrated right after ballots have been mailed and just before the election day ends voting. In rare cases there are a few outlying voters who need to receive challenge letters, so we will pull material from our warehouse and hand-deliver the forms to Elections headquarters so agency staff can process the small batches themselves internally. We do not charge an in-and-out or warehouse fee of any sort for this activity.

Results

Our engagement with King County Elections began in 2006 and has continued to the present. We have continued to meet our required SLA requirements of 100% record match and our 24-hour mail drop deadlines, ensuring that every vote cast in King County is counted.