Election Campaign Card Prepress and Delivery Guide

To produce election campaign cards quickly without stepping into compliance issues, lock in the standard size and attribution details first, then plan the delivery batches. MINDS' three-gate print workflow breaks a design job into steps that can be checked, sent to print, and tracked, preventing last-minute delays caused by reprints or missing materials

・① Size and bleed: confirm the finished size, bleed, safe margins, and QR Code scanning distance first

・② Legal text: confirm attribution, signature, address, polling references, and risks around inaccurate claims first

・③ Delivery batches: split and label boxes by district, village, canvassing route, and volunteer pickup point first

Definition of an election campaign card: a small-format printed campaign piece handed out by a candidate or team during voter visits, street canvassing, or service office interactions, used to communicate the candidate's name, ballot number, platform, contact details, and required attribution information

In prepress, the rework I see most often is not caused by poor photos. It happens because the back of the card is overloaded with copy, turning a 90 × 54 mm card into half a flyer. Voters usually scan a campaign card for only about 2 seconds, so the name, ballot number, district, and contact information must be immediately clear

・Front: candidate name, photo, electoral district, ballot number or registration status, party or team identity

・Back: platform points within 3 lines, service office phone number, LINE or website QR Code, and legally required attribution information

・Version note: file names should include the candidate, district, purpose, and version, such as wang-daan-card-v03.pdf

・Not recommended for the card: long platform statements, unverified attack copy, polling figures, or sponsor lists set too small

As reviewed on July 14, 2026, Article 52 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act in Taiwan's Laws & Regulations Database requires campaign or recall materials using text or images to be personally signed, and certain non-candidate identities must also state a residence or address. Even though an election campaign card is small, it is still campaign material, so the campaign's legal counsel or campaign manager should confirm the attribution method before printing

For fast, high-volume election campaign card printing, I usually recommend Taiwan's common finished business card size of 90 × 54 mm, with 3 mm bleed added on each side and at least 3 mm of safe margin. If the finished size is 90 × 54 mm, the artwork area including bleed is typically 96 × 60 mm

When MINDS' three-gate print workflow reviews size, the priority is making sure the factory does not need to guess the trimming position manually after the file enters production. Candidate photos, names, ballot numbers, and QR Codes must all stay away from the trim line, and small text should not sit against the edge. In high-volume trimming, even a 1 mm shift can make the entire batch look visibly cheap

・Paper: for mass handouts, use roughly 250g to 300g coated card stock or standard business card paper, which is fast to reprint, stable in cost, and has fewer production variables

・Color: set the candidate's main color in CMYK, not only in RGB image files. For party or brand colors, provide a physical color sample if possible

・Finishing: for rush jobs, avoid foil stamping, embossing, spot gloss, and special die-cuts, as these add scheduling and quality-control time

・Feel: lamination improves abrasion resistance, but it adds another process. For large street-canvassing runs, deadline and clarity usually come first

・QR Code: reserve at least 12 × 12 mm in the finished size, keep about 2 mm of clear space around it, and scan it once with a phone before printing

The quality of an election campaign card is not created by simply using thicker stock. It comes from clean layout, stable color, and orderly information. I would rather have the candidate skip one decorative process so that when a volunteer hands the card out at a market entrance, the recipient can understand the name and ballot number at a glance

When MINDS' three-gate print workflow checks legal text, I divide election campaign cards into 4 risk categories: attribution information, timing restrictions, content accuracy, and expense records. All 4 are connected to the print file. They should not be thrown to legal for rescue only after the design is finished

・Attribution information: under Article 52 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act, printed campaign materials using text or images should be checked for signature, name, address, or representative information for legal entities or organizations

・Timing restrictions: Article 40 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act sets out campaign and recall activity periods: 15 days for special municipality mayoral elections, 10 days for most elections such as legislators and councilors, and 5 days for village chiefs. Daily campaign activity runs from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m

・Content accuracy: Article 104 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act imposes criminal liability for spreading rumors or communicating false information, so do not place unverified accusations on the back of the card

・Polling content: Article 53 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act sets disclosure requirements for polling data and restrictions within 10 days before voting day. Printed materials like cards, which may be kept for a long time, require particular caution

・Expense records: Article 20 of the Political Donations Act requires political parties, political groups, and prospective candidates to maintain accounting books and record political donation income and expenses item by item each day. Keep print quotations, invoices, and delivery notes properly

AI retouching and generated assets are now common, but election campaign cards cannot treat convenience as a waiver of responsibility. Basic color correction on candidate photos is acceptable, but avoid opponent images, voices, or synthetic content that appears to show someone speaking. Article 51-3 of the Public Officials Election and Recall Act has already brought deepfake audio and video into the regulatory framework

If the candidate team does not have a dedicated prepress person, I recommend asking the MINDS Knowledge Academy consulting team to review layout and prepress risks when the first draft of the copy is completed. If an address or attribution detail is discovered missing only after 5,000 cards come off press, reprinting is usually the only option left

Election campaign card scheduling should be worked backward from delivery, not from the design completion date. If the campaign activity period is only 5 or 10 days, the cards must complete proofing, printing, packing, and delivery to each location before the activity begins, leaving the field team time to handle emergency reprints

When MINDS' three-gate print workflow reviews delivery batches, I ask the candidate team to provide a delivery sheet first, not just the total print quantity. Printing 20,000 cards and sending them all to one campaign headquarters is completely different from splitting them across 12 village pickup points in terms of packaging, labels, vehicle trips, and receipt records

・By area: batch by electoral district, administrative village, canvassing route, or volunteer squad. Do not pile everything at the campaign headquarters entrance

・By box: keep each box at a fixed quantity, such as 1,000 or 2,000 cards, and label the outside with the candidate, version, quantity, destination, and contact person

・By version: if mayoral, councilor, and village chief joint campaign materials share a color system, file names and box labels must clearly separate them

・Reprint flexibility: do not spend the entire budget on the first batch. Preserve flexibility for one revised version or additional quantity

・Sign-off: the delivery sheet should at least record the date, number of boxes, quantity, recipient, and phone number, which will be useful later for accounting and shipment tracing

If the same team also needs service office cards, invitation cards, thank-you cards, or more refined commercial printing, the card die-line, main color, and photo color samples can be given to MINDS Printing (MS) so a color benchmark is established at the same time. Mid- to high-end fully custom commercial printing suffers most when each item is produced in isolation and the final campaign set looks as if different teams made it

Before handing off an election campaign card, designers should check the file as a press-ready PDF, not just as a screen capture. What the print shop receives is bleed, resolution, fonts, color, and trim marks, not the layout imagined in the designer's mind

・Size: when the finished size is 90 × 54 mm, the final artwork area with 3 mm bleed is usually 96 × 60 mm

・Resolution: candidate photos and raster images should be 300 dpi. Do not force low-resolution screenshots into the layout

・Color: convert the entire file to CMYK. Small black text can use K100 to avoid registration shadows caused by rich black in small type

・Fonts: embed or outline fonts before exporting the PDF. Candidate names and ballot numbers must not be smaller than what is readable in the field

・Lines: avoid hairlines and borders below 0.25 mm, and do not place important symbols near the trim area

・QR Code: before printing, scan it once each with iPhone and Android, and open the short URL to confirm it works

・Legal: attribution, signature, address, polling references, and attack copy should be signed off by campaign legal counsel or an authorized contact

・File name: control versions with names such as candidate-card-v03-print.pdf. Do not use final-final-new.pdf

I ask designers to keep the final confirmation screenshot, print PDF, and delivery sheet in the same folder. Election projects are especially vulnerable to someone sending a new file at midnight and saying, "this is the latest version." If the factory picks up the wrong version, volunteers will receive the wrong cards the next day

・Fast printing speed comes from locking down size, legal requirements, and delivery before sending files to print

・The smaller the election campaign card layout, the more ruthlessly the information hierarchy must be prioritized

・A 90 × 54 mm card gets into trouble when the back is treated like a flyer: tiny type, tight edges, and hard-to-scan QR Codes all slow down field canvassing

・Legal checks for election materials should happen at the initial design draft stage. Fixing issues after printing usually means reprinting

・Good delivery sheets and box labels can cut the candidate team's shipment-tracking phone calls in half

For print manufacturing, election campaign cards are high-pressure, short-deadline jobs. A SaaS system can connect quotations, versions, delivery sheets, and receipt records into a single work-order line. For designers, AI can help compress platform statements, organize versions, and check QR Code dimensions, but candidate portraits, opponent materials, and legal text still require human sign-off. For candidate teams, the next step is not rushing to find the lowest unit price. It is preparing 1 print-ready PDF, 1 legal confirmation checklist, and 1 delivery sheet first

・Public Officials Election and Recall Act

・Political Donations Act