In a vote-by-mail state, the date that governs your entire mail program is the day Spokane County Elections drops ballots — not election day. Ballots go out weeks before the election, most people vote within days of opening the envelope, and a mailer that lands after that window is talking to voters who already voted. Every print and mail deadline on a Spokane campaign should be worked backwards from the county's published ballot mail date, which Spokane County Elections posts for each election. BrandBoostPrints prints and mails locally, so a piece produced here enters the Spokane mail stream instead of trucking in from out of state — which is usually the difference between hitting the window and missing it.
The ballot mail date is the deadline, not election day
Washington mails a ballot to every registered voter, and a voter can return it any day from the moment it arrives. That collapses the campaign's useful window: the last several weeks of a Spokane race are not a build toward a single Tuesday, they are a long tail of people voting one household at a time as ballots come in.
The practical consequence is that persuasion mail has to land before ballots do, and turnout mail has to land in the first days after ballots do. A persuasion piece that arrives a week after the ballot drop is arguing with voters whose ballots are already in the drop box. Check the ballot mail date for your specific election with Spokane County Elections and treat it as fixed — it does not move for your print schedule.
What each mail window is actually for
Before ballots drop: name ID and persuasion. This is where the candidate photo, the biography, the two or three issues, and the endorsements belong. Voters have nothing in hand yet, so the piece is building the frame they will use when the envelope shows up.
The week ballots land: contrast and closing argument. Voters are holding the ballot and looking at names, several of which they do not recognize. Mail that arrives in this window competes directly with the voters' pamphlet on the kitchen counter.
After ballots drop: turnout mechanics. Where to return it, that no stamp is needed at a drop box, the deadline, and — if you are working from returned-ballot data — a nudge to the people in your universe who have not voted yet. Chase mail is the only mail where a shorter production runway is genuinely worth paying for, because the targeting data changes daily.
Why the 6" × 9" postcard is the default political mailer
The 6" × 9" postcard is the largest piece that still mails at the letter rate, so it buys the most surface area per postage dollar of any addressed card. Anything bigger crosses into flat rates, which cost meaningfully more per piece and rarely earn it back on a local race. Our 6" × 9" postcards are $50 for a box of 100, with volume pricing quoted in the configurator.
The 6" × 9" size is also cheap to print because of how it nests on a press sheet. Print cost per piece is driven mostly by how many finished pieces come off one sheet with minimal trim waste, and 6" × 9" is a stock size precisely because it fits standard sheets efficiently. An odd custom size that leaves a strip of unused paper on every sheet costs more per card for no visible benefit.
Here is the part that does not help us: if your budget is tight and your message is short, a smaller card that qualifies for the USPS postcard rate costs less to mail than a 6" × 9", and on a large universe the postage difference outweighs the print difference. The 6" × 9" wins when you need room — a photo, an endorsement list, a contrast box. It does not win when the whole message is "Vote by November 4." Decide by how much you actually have to say.
Targeting: voter file mail vs. EDDM
Use the voter file when your universe is defined by anything about the voter. Party history, vote propensity, precinct performance, whether a ballot has been returned — none of that is available through Every Door Direct Mail, which targets carrier routes, not people. Voter lists come from the Washington Secretary of State and Spokane County Elections, and any list that has been sitting on a laptop since the last cycle needs to be re-pulled and address-checked before it goes to print.
Use EDDM when your universe genuinely is "everyone on these blocks" — a legislative district saturation piece, a school levy, a neighborhood council race with a small geography. EDDM skips the addressing and the list cost, but it will also mail to households with no registered voters in them, and you cannot suppress the ones who already voted.
Dedupe by household before you print, not after. Two ballots go to a two-voter household in one envelope, but a raw voter file will send that household two identical postcards unless you collapse them. On a mid-sized universe, household deduplication is one of the largest single savings available on a mail program, and it costs nothing but a data step.
What Washington requires on a political mail piece
Washington's Public Disclosure Commission requires sponsor identification on political advertising — the "Paid for by" line with the committee name and address — and imposes additional disclosure on some sponsors, including top-contributor listings for certain independent expenditures and ballot measure ads. The exact requirements depend on who is paying and what the ad is, and they are revised periodically.
Confirm the current PDC rules for your committee type before the file goes to press. A missing or wrong disclaimer is not a design problem, it is a reprint, and a reprint discovered after the mail date usually means the piece never runs. We will flag an obviously missing "Paid for by" line if we spot it, but the legal responsibility for the disclaimer sits with the committee, not the printer.
Working backwards from the in-home date
Build the schedule from the date you want the piece in mailboxes and subtract each step, in this order: mail transit and USPS processing, mail prep and addressing, printing and drying, your proof approval, and final data delivery. Proof approval is the step that blows up campaign schedules, because it is the only one that depends on a candidate who is out doorbelling.
Approve your proof with the version of the file you actually intend to mail. Late text changes — a new endorsement, a corrected date — restart the clock on everything downstream of proofing, and on a chase piece that is the whole margin.
Give the data step real time on any addressed mail. Address standardization, move updates, and household deduplication all happen before a single sheet is printed, and a list delivered late delays the print, not just the mailing.
Printing in Spokane instead of shipping pieces in
A piece printed in Spokane enters the local mail stream directly, which removes freight transit from your schedule entirely. Out-of-state printers often quote a lower unit price and then hand back the days they saved you in shipping — and freight delays are the one variable a campaign cannot recover from, because the ballot drop does not slide.
Local printing also makes a late universe change survivable. If returned-ballot data changes who you want to chase, revising the list and running the job here is a conversation, not a re-freight.
The pieces that go with the mail
Door hangers carry the canvass. A hanger reaches the not-home doors, which on a weekday evening is most of them, and it does not require postage or a mailing list. Our door hangers are $80 for 100 — worth ordering in the same run as your mail so the design work is done once.
Business reply cards are the cheapest way to make a mail piece measurable. A card the voter can fill out and send back — a volunteer signup, a yard sign request, a pledge to vote — turns a one-way mailer into a list you can act on, and the returns tell you which universe responded. Business reply cards are $45 for 100.
Budget print and postage separately. The prices above are for printing. Postage, mail prep, and list costs are quoted alongside and vary with your piece size, quantity, and how well the list presorts — and there is no candidate discount on postage. Campaigns pay the same commercial rates as everyone else; the savings come from presort, volume, and not mailing the same household twice.