Political direct mail for voter contact, absentee chase, and GOTV

Let postage decide, then fit the message. The smallest size mails at the lowest postcard rate and is the right call for high-volume ID and GOTV drops where reach matters more than real estate. The mid-size piece stays inside USPS letter dimensions while roughly doubling your message area — the standard for persuasion and comparison mail. The largest size crosses into flat rates and exists mainly to qualify for EDDM saturation.

Every Door Direct Mail delivers your piece to every address on a chosen USPS carrier route without any mailing list. It fits school board, city council, and ward-level races where the carrier route closely matches the precinct and where near-universal name recognition is the goal. It is a poor fit for a primary, where you want only your own party’s high-propensity voters and where mailing everyone means paying to reach voters who cannot vote for you.

Ballot chase mail targets voters who requested an absentee or mail ballot and have not returned it yet. It carries the return deadline, drop-off locations, and one clear instruction — nothing else. Because the target list refreshes daily as ballots come in, chase mail runs as a short, fast drop on a tight in-home window, and it is the highest-conversion mail most campaigns will send. Plan the artwork weeks ahead so the only variable at drop time is the list.

Yes. Variable data printing lets each piece carry its own polling location, early voting site, ballot status language, or targeted message, pulled from a column in your file. Include those fields as columns in your list and name which column drives which element on the piece. This is what makes a chase program work at scale — 30,000 pieces, each one telling a specific household where and by when.

Plan by household, not by voter — a three-voter household gets one piece per drop unless you are deliberately mailing individuals, which roughly triples cost. Most competitive campaigns run three to five touches to their persuasion universe across the cycle, with the final two concentrated in the last three weeks. Fewer, better-targeted drops consistently outperform one thin mailing to a universe you could not afford to mail properly.

Mail reaches every targeted household with no volunteers, no walk lists, and no weather. Door hangers require someone to physically walk the door, which caps reach at whatever your volunteer program can actually cover — but the voter has to remove the piece to get inside, so attention runs higher. Mail scales past your field capacity. Door hangers close the doors your field can reach. Programs with money but no volunteers lean toward mail; programs with volunteers but no money lean toward hangers.

Yes. Entering mail deeper into the postal network, closer to the delivery area, shortens transit time and narrows the in-home window from a vague week to a predictable couple of days. For a persuasion drop three weeks out that precision is nice to have. For a final-weekend GOTV piece it is the whole ballgame. Use the quote form to price deeper entry for your specific district.

Usually not, and this surprises a lot of first-time treasurers. Nonprofit Marketing Mail rates are limited to qualified nonprofit organizations that hold a current USPS authorization. Candidate committees and most political committees do not hold one and mail at commercial rates. Budget commercial postage unless your organization already has that authorization on file — and if you do, tell us up front so the mailing is prepared under the right permit.

Print-ready PDF is preferred; high-resolution JPG at 300 dpi with full bleed is accepted. Two things trip up mail artwork specifically: the address block area must stay clear of artwork and dark backgrounds so the address is machine-readable, and the indicia area must stay open. Supply your list as CSV or Excel with one column per field and headers in the first row. Full specifications are in the Campaign Print Guide.

USPS treats political and election mail as distinct categories during a cycle and tags them at entry so postal facilities can identify and track the volume. Mail from candidates and committees is identified as Political Mail; official materials sent by election officials are identified as Election Mail. The tagging happens on the containers at the dock — it is our job, not something you place on your artwork. What you owe on the artwork is your disclaimer.

Reorders print in the same 5-business-day window as new orders. Your artwork stays on file in your store account — log in, find the order, click Reorder Design, and check out. The one difference from other products: a new or updated list still needs processing before the drop, so a reorder to a refreshed universe is not instant. See the Campaign Reordering Guide if you have not used the reorder flow before.