Third-party mailings offering voter registration and mail-in ballot applications are causing confusion in the county, especially among those who receive the applications for a deceased spouse or even a dog.

John Dollar of Butler Township was upset when he received a voter registration application for his wife, who has been dead for four years.

Dollar wondered if something nefarious was afoot, especially with the current national tension between Republicans and Democrats regarding mail-in ballots.

“Why she'd be getting this, being gone for four years now, I don't know,” Dollar said.

The address where the application in the mailing would be sent is the post office box for the county Bureau of Elections, and a toll-free phone number answers via voicemail at the state Department of State.

The mailing received by Dollar was sent by the Republican National Committee.

Wanda Murren, director of communications at the Department of State, said Monday that a handful of organizations, including both the Democratic and Republican committees, send the mass mailings out each year.

“They are very well intentioned, and the goal is to increase voter participation and that is a very worthy goal,” Murren said. “We really do appreciate any effort to get out the vote for every eligible voter.”

She said the reason voters are getting registration and mail-in ballot applications for dead spouses is that the organizations that send the mass mailings use databases that have not been updated to remove deceased voters.

“We do not have control over the mailing lists these organizations are using and that's how that happens,” Murren said.

Murren said there is no way the vote of a dead resident could be counted or a deceased person could register to vote because several processes are constantly in play to prevent such a mistake.

She said death notices are forwarded to counties by the state every year, the counties use a national change-of-address program to ensure voters are on one role, and 27 states now participate in a voter registration consortium that shares information about voters who have registered elsewhere.

“All those databases are running against each other, and it helps to keep the voter roles accurate for each of those states,” Murren said.

Aaron Sheasley, the Butler County Elections Bureau director, stressed that the mailings received by voters are applications, not ballots.

He has received many calls from county voters who wonder why they have received the mailings.

“The state and county don't send out mass mailings, especially to people who are no longer with us,” Sheasley said. “It's confusing people.”

Anyone who tried to send in a mail-in ballot application or voter registration application for a dead person would quickly be thwarted, Sheasley said, because of the system of checks and balances that exists at the elections bureau.

“In the system, it would show they are deceased,” he said.

Neither Murren not Sheasley have heard of even one invalid voter being registered to vote or recording a vote through a mail-in ballot in the state.

Sheasley said he has received calls from “a lot of very upset people” who have received the third-party mailings.

“People's first reaction is, 'I got a ballot in my dog or my deceased spouse's name,'” he said. “They did not get a ballot. They got an application for a ballot.”

Each application for a voter registration or mail-in ballot is checked and double-checked by staff when they arrive at the elections bureau, Sheasley said.

“We process things like this all the time, and I'm not aware of one that has ever gotten through,” he said of the third-party applications. “We look at them very carefully.”

He agreed with Murren that the third-party organizations are trying to do the right thing by getting as many Americans as possible to vote.

“But some people get very offended by it,” Sheasley said.

He said the elections bureau has gotten several hundred calls from voters about third-party mailings.

“A lot of people are paying attention to the news and a lot of Butler County voters, when they are upset, they certainly call in and we welcome those calls,” Sheasley said.

Regarding the post office and its ability to deliver mail-in ballots for the presidential election in November, Sheasley has every confidence that the local post offices will perform as usual.

He is in frequent contact with the postmaster at the Butler Post Office to talk about the large number of mail-in ballot applications the elections bureau is receiving each week.

“We'll do what is legally required and that's all we can do,” Sheasley said. “It's nothing we can control.”

He said mail-in ballots can be dropped off at the elections bureau up until 8 p.m. Nov. 3, which is the day of the general election.

Voters must bring a valid driver's license or identification card issued by the state Department of Transportation when dropping off their ballot.

Voters cannot bring in the completed ballots of other voters unless they have legal documents stating that they have power of attorney for the voter who is not present, Sheasley said.

The elections bureau is a few weeks away from beginning to finalize the ballots and have them printed, Sheasley said.

Once all of the processes required in finalizing ballots are complete, the elections bureau staff will begin to process the mail-in ballot requests and send ballots to voters.

Sheasley said by the end of the week, the elections bureau will have surpassed the 25,000 mail-in ballot requests received in the primary election.

He did not know how many voters in each party requested mail-in ballots, as he is focused now on learning how many ballots will be needed for the general election.

The elections bureau will bring in extra workers to process the mail-in ballots once they have been finalized, Sheasley said.

“I think it will go as well as, if not better than, the primary election,” he said.

He said the mail-in ballot application includes a box that voters can tick to receive mail-in ballots in all upcoming elections. If the box is unchecked, the voter must request a mail-in ballot for each election.

Sheasley is confident that the 2020 general election will allow all voters to fulfill their civic duty, regardless of the national issues at hand.

“We have the equipment and we have the staff,” he said. “I think it's going to be fine.”