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.

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.

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.

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

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.

https://watchdoglab.substack.com/p/joco-election-office-dealing-with