The Iowa Democratic Party has mailed a second round of absentee ballot request forms to about 36,000 Iowa voters this month. The shape of the forms in the first mailing prevented them from being automatically processed by Postal Service machines.
“There was a change in postal regulations that took our vendor by surprise and so those absentee ballot requests have been sent out again,” Hart says, “and we have worked with our county auditors across the state to resolve that issue,” Iowa Democratic Party chair Rita Hart said during an online news conference this week.
A spokesperson for Iowa Democrats says the party received a call on September 9 that there was a problem with the shape of the ballot request form. New forms were sent to the same voters on September 17, along with information urging them to submit a new request in case their first wasn’t processed. Nearly 60% of the Iowa voters who received both mailings have submitted absentee ballot requests according to the Iowa Democratic Party.
Early voting in Iowa starts October 16 and that’s the date county auditors may begin mailing out absentee ballots.
(By Katarina Sostaric, Iowa Public Radio)