Front of postcard being sent by the Secretary of State.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office is putting more than 300,000 postcards in the mail this week. The cards are addressed to Iowans who are eligible to vote, but are not registered to do so.
“We’re hopeful that some of those folks will want to take that invitation and become active as a voter,” Pate told Radio Iowa.
A grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts is covering the costs of printing and mailing the reminder postcards. The cards should show up in mailboxes over the next two weeks. Pate does not have a demographic breakdown on the 300-thousand who are getting the postcards, but he suspects many are young.
“The younger we are, the less likely we are to be voters,” Pate said, “but I think with a little work we can change that.”
Iowans have until October 27 to pre-register to vote. Iowa law also allows voters to register to vote at their precinct on Election Day. This past January Iowa set an all-time record, with more than two million Iowans registered to vote. More than 90 percent of eligible Iowans are currently registered to vote in the 2018 election.
“We’re in the top six in the country,” Pate said, adding this mailing may help boost Iowa higher in comparison to other states’ registration records.
This is National Voter Registration Month and today is National Voter Registration Day.
Pate, a Republican, is seeking reelection in November to another four-year term as Iowa’s top election official. Deidre DeJear, the Democrat who’s challenging Pate in 2018, is visiting Iowa colleges this week to support campus voter registration events. She was at Grandview College Monday and has scheduled stops at the University of Iowa, the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University through the end of the week.