About Setting Up Ballot Styles for an Election
A ballot style is a list of issues and candidates on a ballot that is tailored for the voters in a particular precinct, group of precincts, or city.
One of the first tasks to accomplish when setting up an election in Voter Focus is to create the ballot styles and assign them to precincts. This task can be completed in Elections > Maintain Election Settings > Ballot Styles > Set Up Ballot Styles on the List of Ballot Styles dialog.
You must complete this task before you can send out mail ballots or print a precinct register.
In general elections, each precinct and precinct split will have a unique
ballot style assigned to it. For primary elections,
We recommend you include the precinct number in the ballot style name. For example, in a general election, the ballot style for precinct 1 might be named G1. In a primary, the ballot styles for precinct 1 might be:
- R1 for Republican voters
- D1 for Democratic voters
- N1 for Npa voters
Including the precinct number in the ballot style name will help you provide precinct specific election results, as required by law.
Up to five letters and numbers can be used for the name. As we noted above, you should select a name consistent with your county's ballot style naming conventions; however, please note our recommendation that you include the precinct number in the ballot style name.
It is not necessary to create ballot styles for precincts or parties that are not voting in the election.
When creating ballot styles, if the election is a primary, the Party drop-down list appears on the List of Ballot Styles dialog. The list shows the two major parties and NPA (for No Party Affiliation voters). If minor parties are selected on the Election Maintenance dialog, those parties are also available for selection. You will need to select the party for which this ballot style is being created. The selected party is sticky for the current session of the program, so that you can quickly create multiple ballot styles for the same party.
If the election includes the U.S. presidential/vice presidential race, you will need to create a ballot style for mail ballot voters who moved out of Florida to another state after book closing for the election in their new state. (F.S. 101.663 entitles such voters to receive a mail ballot from their former Florida precinct. These voters must be designated by selecting the Fed Elections Only check box in the voter record.) The name for this ballot style can be anything up to five characters in length, but we suggest you use the name FED, or something similar, so the ballot style will be easy to find in reports. The federal elections only ballot style will be the same for all precincts.
When you create your ballot styles, in the Next
Ballot Number field, we suggest starting ballots at 1
unless your county has a different procedure. You can change the starting
number any time later in the election cycle, if necessary. For example,
if a group of ballots is smudged or damaged, you could change the next
ballot number so that the system skips the numbers of the spoiled ballots.
When mail ballot labels or envelopes are printed, the beginning ballot
number for the Deliver Ballots run are picked up from the current
value in the Next Ballot Number
field. For each label/envelope produced, the ballot number in the field
is incremented. Any numbers already
used
To change something about a ballot style, such as the name, description, or number, select the style in the list of styles in the top half of the List of Ballot Styles dialog to display and change any option you'd like in the bottom half. If you modify the ballot style name (that is, the value in the Ballot Style field) after precincts have been assigned to ballot styles, Voter Focus automatically modifies the ballot style name for that ballot style's precinct assignments, so you won't have to reassign the precinct to the changed ballot style.
Related Topics
- See Set Up Ballot Styles for an Election for more information.
- When you have created all ballot styles for the election, go to ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Ballot Styles > Assign Ballots to Precincts. See Assign Ballot Styles to Precincts for further instructions.
- To delete a ballot style, select the style in the list and click Delete Style.
- Use the report Ballot Styles for Election to check the entry of ballot styles or the Ballot Style Assignments report to check assignments of ballot styles to precincts.