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Chicago is using a new citywide mailing to seek email addresses for over 1.5 million voters in the Windy City, which it hopes to use to keep them informed and provide options on programs like vote by mail. Block Club Chicago has more:

The city Election Board wants you to vote — and maybe, please, sign up for its mailing list.

The Board of Election Commissioners is now sending out voter cards to more than 1.5 million people across Chicago. The cards have information about where each person can vote — and this time they’ll also give people information about how to give the board their email addresses.

The email addresses are kept private, according to a news release. They will be used to reach voters so they can be encouraged to vote by mail and to tell them about changes in their polling place, among other things.

About 300,000 people are already on the board’s email list, but most of those are younger voters, according to the board.

The mailings will include a unique code that voters can submit online to share their email address with the board.

Didn’t get a card? Register to vote or change your mailing address here.

Email addresses are increasingly valuable to election officials as a tool to reach voters, both because of the ubiquity of smartphones and other technology along with the decreasing reliance on postal mail. It will be interesting to see how many new addresses the city gets – and how difficult it is to keep them up to date going forward. Stay tuned …