CHAPTER 9
NATIONAL CHANGE OF ADDRESS PROGRAM
821—9.1(48A) State registrar to organize.
	9.1(1) The state registrar of voters shall annually offer to every county commissioner the opportunity to participate in the registrar’s submittal of voter registration records to a licensed vendor of the United States Postal Service for matching with national change of address (NCOA) records.
	9.1(2) The vendor used by the state registrar shall be selected in accordance with all procurement laws and rules of the state and the department of administrative services.
	9.1(3) The state registrar shall prepare a file of all registered voters in all counties whose commissioners have chosen to participate in the program. The file shall be in the form and format required by the vendor. The voter records contained in the file shall be categorized according to the following statuses: active, inactive, and pending.
	9.1(4) Upon receipt of the NCOA data from the vendor, the state registrar shall promptly prepare a data file for each county to process in a batch-processing module at the county level. There shall be three statuses of NCOA records: processed, unprocessed, and deleted. The batch-processing screen’s default shall be a display of all unprocessed records. The state registrar shall prescribe and notify each participating commissioner about how the commissioner shall process the NCOA records.
821—9.2(48A) Commissioner’s responsibility upon receipt of NCOA data.
	9.2(1) Commissioner to update county records. Each commissioner shall examine the data provided by the NCOA vendor and shall update the county’s registration records on the basis of that data in accordance with Iowa Code subsections 48A.27(4) and 48A.27(5).
	9.2(2) The commissioner shall process the registration records of voters who have moved within the county as well as the registration records of voters who have moved outside the county. For in-county moves, the commissioner shall change the voter’s residential address to the address provided by the NCOA vendor. For out-of-county moves, the commissioner shall change the status of the voter registration record to “inactive.”
	9.2(3) In order to avoid complications because of scheduled special elections, the state registrar shall provide two date ranges in which the commissioner shall process NCOA records. The primary date range occurs first and shall apply to all counties that do not have a special election scheduled to be held within that date range. The second date range shall apply only to those counties that have a special election scheduled to be held during the primary date range.
821—9.3(48A) State to coordinate mailing of NCOA notifications.
	9.3(1) After the county commissioners have processed NCOA records for each of the date ranges, the state registrar shall coordinate the printing and mailing of the required NCOA notifications. The state registrar shall notify the commissioners when the notifications have been mailed. Any postage-paid preaddressed return cards returned by voters will be sent back to the counties, not to the state registrar.
	9.3(2) The state registrar shall send two notifications to each voter identified as having moved either within or outside a county: one to the voter’s former address and one to the voter’s new address as provided by NCOA records.
821—9.4(48A) Fees. The state registrar shall charge the counties for the costs of the NCOA process, including matching the records and the printing of and postage for the mailing. The fees charged to the counties shall reflect actual costs to the state registrar.
These rules are intended to implement Iowa Code sections 48A.27(4) and 48A.28(2).
[Filed 11/4/94, Notice 9/28/94—published 11/23/94, effective 1/5/95]
[Filed emergency 2/22/06—published 3/15/06, effective 2/22/06]
[Filed 4/21/06, Notice 3/15/06—published 5/10/06, effective 6/14/06]