Sep 6, 2019
Whether it is an embarassing email address created in your youth or a straightforward work email address, it is important that it is inputted correctly in your voter list!
The Importance of Having Correct Email Addresses
Electionbuddy offers numerous methods of contacting voters about upcoming elections. An important method of communication is through email notices. Email address have become a popular form of communication as the years go by; in fact, more than half the planet is estimated to be using email — and that number keeps growing! Reaching voters through their email address allows them to simply follow a link and vote in you election. However, to reach the intended voters, it is important to mae sure your voter list has the correct information.
Validity and Correctness
Be wary of typos — if you’re trying to contact Tom at tom@fakeaddress.com, and you accidentally put tim@fakeaddress.com, the email will still look correct. But, it will lead to Tom not receiving his email to vote, and (if the typo-ed email address happens to be a real email address that belongs to someone else) could even allow Tim, who is totally unrelated to your organization, an unauthorized chance to vote! ElectionBuddy goes through the voter list and ensures that all the emails inserted are valid email addresses but it cannot make sure that they are correct email addresses. In fact, checking for the validity of an email address is highly unlikely to catch an incorrect email address.
In the cases where the wrong email address has been put in and the voter cares about voting, they may send an email to the administrator of the election asking why they did not receive a notice to vote. This could be as simple as ensuring that the voter who emailed is actually on the voter list and has had the wrong email listed. But, this problem can also be difficult to solve. You can learn more about these problems in the following section.
If you ended up with a typo that belonged to a real email address (but just doesn’t belong to your intended voter), and the person who received the email incorrectly read it and voted, you can spoil the ballot and re-add the intended voter with the correct email address.
However, if no one has voted with the incorrect email address, ElectionBuddy makes fixing this easy by allowing you to edit the voter’s email address. This edit will lead to a new email being sent to the voter and them being able to vote; however, this situation shows how frustrating it can be when the voter list contains incorrect data.
The Voter Still Didn’t Get Their Email Notice?
This brings us to a more exasperating issue as to why voters do not receive their email notices: when ElectionBuddy’s emails become marked as spam by your voters’ email programs. There are various reasons why emails might be marked as spam and to fight this see our help article on undelivered email notices and our blog post on spam email!