The Business of Voting by Mail 📬

2020 is the year that voting by mail has taken the spotlight like never before and companies supporting the vote-in mail process have been overwhelmed by the demand. While vote by mail has existed in the United States since the Civil War where soldiers could vote back in their home counties through postal services, the outcome of this year’s election could very well lie on mail-in voting. 

Photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash

Outbound Printing

• Aside from printing, a piece of important machinery called the ballot inserters is a heavy investment, costing millions apiece.
• Each ballot has an identifiable bar code that tells exactly what it is and there can be thousands of varieties in a single election.

Runbeck Election Services from Arizona is one of the biggest ballot printing companies handling ballot printing in the West. They shifted their operations from print publications to solely focusing on election voting.

• Although they already had 5 inserters, they ordered an additional 11 inserters in March anticipating the surging demand for mail-in ballots. 
• The company also performs inbound counting of votes operations and has products it sells to support tabulation.

K&H Printing, from Seattle, Washington, has been in the commercial printing business since 1908 and its division K&H Election Services prints the most ballots in the country by volume. 

Inbound Counting
As expected, mail-in ballots take a long time to count in the inbound process. This is a highly regulated process with officials having to validate the legitimacy of the envelope,  the ballot as well as the signature match. In large counties, counting machines called tabulators support the inbound process and although smaller counties have done them by hand, they have raced to incorporate tabulators for the influx of mail-in votes. 

• Election Systems and Software, Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic are the three biggest companies performing tabulating responsibilities for mail-in votes as well as electronic voting systems.
• These companies are also prone to the most criticism for security and transparency since the market is a niche with little competition.