JoCo Election Office dealing with wrong address on 43,441 return envelopes from Center for Voter Information nonprofit

Street address number on return envelope was "off by 1," which means other side of the street!

On Wed. morning the Johnson County Election office posted a message on X about an address error in a return envelope for advance ballot applications orchestrated by the nonprofit Center for Voter Information.

View this X posting online.

A Sept. 4 email from the Center for Voter Information to the Kansas Secretary of State’s office (obtained from an open records request) indicated CVI would be sending 43,441 applications for advance ballots to Johnson County residents starting on Sept. 16.

Center for Voter Information self-reported they would be sending nearly 50,000 advance ballot requests to the counties in KS-03 starting on Sept. 16.

The CVI sample return envelope shows the off-by-one error in the address for the Johnson County Election Office.

It’s unclear what addresses were used for the clerks in the other counties.

Off by One: Sample CVI mailing with pre-addressed return envelope with WRONG address for JoCo Election Office. Correct address is across the street at 2101 E Kansas City Rd. It’s curious the redacted address CVI used in the example was an actual address of three female, Democratic voters and one unaffiliated male.

The JoCo Election office gave additional information on X as a remedy to the address problem:

View this X posting online.

Court Case

There is some irony in this clerical address problem since the Voter Participation Center, a sister of Center for Voter Information, is in a battle with the Kansas Secretary of State in the Tenth Circuit, US Court of Appeals, over pre-prepopulated voter registration/advance ballot request forms.

An earlier federal district court ruling said VPC/CVI had a first amendment right to pre-populate address fields for voter registration/advance ballot request forms. But it’s unclear how the right for these nonprofits should trump the right of all citizens to have proper election administration.

These VPC/CVI mailings cause confusion for many voters. In court records Shawnee County election commissioner Andrew Howell said a number of voters blamed his office (“expressed anger and frustration at the purported incompetency of the office”) because of duplicates and errors in the pre-filled applications sent by the Voter Participation Center.

Ford County Clerk Debora Cox in court records said she placed ads in three Ford County newspapers to remind voters the pre-filled applications were from VPC, or sister organization Center for Voter Information, and had not come from the county election office.

Related

On Aug. 24 VPC/CVI sent about 24,000 voter registration applications only to five KS-03 counties in Sharice Davids’ KS-03 congressional district.

VPC/CVI nonprofits to mail final round of voter registration applications to Sharice Davids' congressional district

The lawsuit between VoteAmerica and Voter Participation Center (sister organization of Center for Voter Information) is still un unsettled matter in the Tenth Circuit, US Court of Appeals.

VoteAmerica/VPC claim it’s their constitutional right to free speech to pre-populate voter registration forms and requests for advance ballots, regardless of the clerical errors and problems they cause election administration officials.

Does freedom of speech allow interference in election administration?

Federal judge in Kansas finds personalized mail ballot requests by third parties are "inherently expressive conduct that the First Amendment embraces"