It arrives in the mail — an unassuming white slip in a plain envelope with local postage.

“We have recently received your voter registration,” the form reads. It then indicates whether the registration was accepted, rejected or marked incomplete.

It’s not the same as a voter registration card. So what are these notices? Why are they being sent out? And what do they mean?

Here’s what you need to know about Voter Registration Acknowledgement Notices — and what you should do if you get one.

Why did I receive this form?

Cities and towns send Voter Registration Acknowledgement Notices (VRANs) to anyone who registers to vote for the first time or updates their registration without providing proper proof of address.

“This is a second check for our office to make sure voters have truly filled out what we’re getting in the mail,” Portland City Clerk Ashley Rand said.

What should I do if I get a VRAN?

If you receive one of these forms, you should contact your city or town clerk’s office to confirm that all your information is correct and, if necessary, provide proper proof of residency, such as a utility bill or bank statement showing your full name and address.

I didn’t register to vote or update my registration but still received a form. Why?

The city clerk’s office said Wednesday that a handful of Portland residents have called with questions about why they received a VRAN. In those cases, Rand said a clerk has shown residents the signed voter registration cards that the office received.

In most instances, Rand said, those people confirmed the signature was theirs but said they didn’t realize they had signed anything regarding their voter registration.

“We’ve shown them the card they filled out, and they’ve said they did sign it but didn’t realize what they were signing,” she said.

So far this year, Rand said, her office has heard from about five people who said they received a VRAN despite not knowingly filling out a voter registration card.

“What we’ve heard is that groups are going around with prefilled voter registration cards and asking people to sign them, saying it’s a petition,” Rand said. “But they are signing a legitimate voter registration card. And then the groups send these forms to us in the mail.”

Rand said she has only heard about these groups anecdotally and isn’t sure how widespread the practice is or why it’s happening.

Earlier this month, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ordered a conservative group named Common Sense for Maine to stop sending mailings that included voter registration cards prefilled to register the enrollee as a Republican.

Bellows sent a similar cease-and-desist letter in 2023 to the No Labels Party as it was attempting to collect enough signatures to qualify as an official political party in Maine. The secretary of state said at the time that some voters thought they were merely signing a petition when they were actually being asked to change their party enrollment. After Bellows’ office sent letters to the nearly 7,000 Mainers who had agreed to register as No Labels voters, hundreds of them rescinded their enrollment in the party, which is now defunct in Maine.

So, these forms are legitimate?

Yes. Rand confirmed that her office is sending such forms to Portland voters.

The city typically sends out a couple thousand of these forms each year, she said.

What if information on my VRAN is incorrect?

Contact your local election clerk to get the information corrected.

Rand said incorrect polling locations listed on some forms — which she says she has heard about only a few times— are the result of human error.

“If the polling place is incorrect but the address is right, it’s just an error from the election clerk who mailed it out,” Rand said. “If someone gets the wrong information on their VRAN, they can call the city and we can correct it.”

I got a VRAN, but I never responded. Now what?

If the VRAN indicates a voter application is incomplete and the clerk does not hear back from the voter, the application will be rejected. In that case, people can still register to vote at their polling place on Election Day thanks to Maine’s same-day registration law.

If the VRAN indicates the application was accepted, no response is required, and the voter will be officially registered after 15 days.

The Maine Department of the Secretary of State sets the VRAN process for local clerks to follow.