Create Book Closing Totals and Generate Precinct Registers

Because Book Closing Totals generates your precinct registers for an election, first verify the precincts and precinct settings are set up correctly:

Ballot styles—Define all ballot styles for the election and assign them to the voting precincts. See Set Up Ballot Styles for an Election for instructions.

Combined precincts—If you plan to combine multiple precincts within a single precinct register, define the combined precincts. See Combine Precincts in a Single Precinct Register for instructions.

Separate precinct splits—If you want to generate separate registers for one or more precinct splits within a precinct, set up the separate register(s). See Set Up a Separate Precinct Register for a Precinct Split for instructions.

Multiple books—If you want Voter Focus to divide a precinct register into multiple books, set this up for the precincts where you want this to occur. See Divide a Precinct Register into Multiple Books for instructions.

System Options—Several system options affect the generation and appearance of precinct registers. Verify that the options are set up to produce what you want. See VOTER FOCUS ADMIN > System Options > Prec Reg/Elctns > Precinct Register Options for a description of each option.

Before running Book Closing Totals, verify that the following tasks have been done:

Set election status to Active—On the Election Maintenance dialog, verify that the Election Status Code is Active. If it isn't Active, see Change an Election's Status.

Move voters who haven't responded to an Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice to Suspense Status—Run the Move Voters to Suspense List program, which takes voters who were sent an Address Confirmation Notice/Final Notice (due to undeliverable mail) more than 30 days ago and have not responded.

Process protected voters—Select the Privacy Voter box for all voters who have completed and submitted a Confidentiality Request.

Resolve eligibility matches—Process records in the Eligibility Match Queue, Task Notification Queue, and DPS Queue that may affect a voter's ability to participate in the election.

Run Integrity Check—It's important to run the Integrity Check program and resolve any issues you find before creating your book closing totals.

To tabulate and save book closing totals and generate registers:

1. Ensure that the correct election is the focused election. If not, click Change Election Status on the Console and select the election.
2. Verify that the election status is Active.
3. Go to ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Book Closing > Generate Book Closing Totals. The totals will be tabulated and saved to the database. This involves inserting a record for every eligible voter with ID, resident address, mail ballot delivery address, precinct, and Limited Ballot flag details into a special book closing table. For party specific elections, voters who are affiliated with a non participating party are not included in the totals. Depending on your county size and server capacity, tabulation might take a few minutes.

In addition, the button label changes from Generate Book Closing Totals to RERUN Book Closing Totals to remind you that, if you retake the totals, you will be overwriting the totals from the previous run. Doing a rerun deletes the previous totals from the database and creates new ones from the voter registration data in its current state. If you do rerun the totals, remember that any book closing reports already printed and archived may be invalidated.

You will need to re-run the totals if:

• Any of the preparation tasks are not first completed.
• The System Options > Prec Reg / Elctns settings were not correct and are reset for your county.
4. Click OK when the book closing totals are complete and you are prompted to generate precinct registers.
5. If registers were previously printed, you are then prompted to enter Ye$ and click OK to proceed. This confirms you understand that registers will be regenerated, which invalidates the previous registers.
6. If you are regenerating registers, the system verifies if you need to first change election settings.
   • Click OK to regenerate registers with the current election settings.
   • Click Cancel to stop the process. You can then update the election settings and redo this procedure from step 1 when you are ready.

You can now do the following:

• Run Book Closing reports.
Note: The book closing reports can be run at any convenient time. They need not be run immediately because the data does not change until you rerun Book Closing Totals or Generate Supplements.
• Export pollbook data.
• Print the registers.
• Export the registers for delivery to an outside printer.
• Generate supplements, when needed.

Even though the book closing data remains in the database, we recommend that you run the book closing reports and archive them in accordance with your county procedures. The Voter Focus system should not be used as an archive of book closing reports for elections long past.

Storing master copies in paper format is one option for archival storing. The reports can also be stored on your Voter Focus server or the I drive. We suggest you create an archival folder where reports pertaining to each election are stored in subfolders.

The best way we have found to save the reports in a format that resembles the original report is by using Microsoft Excel (XLS or XLSX) or Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. Other format options are RPT (can be read by Crystal Reports), and DOC (Microsoft Word). RTF (rich text format) can be read by a number of applications including Microsoft Word, but in our test samples, the date and time information was garbled. It is important to remember that file formats can become obsolete, so be sure that old files can be read by your current software. If not, re-export them to a newer format.

This topic explains how to generate the initial precinct registers. To learn about what's included and how to generate supplemental lists, see Produce Supplements to Precinct Registers.

New voters not included in the previously generated register and with the following criteria are added:

• An Active (A), Suspense (I), or FPCA 90(F) status.
• An EDR that is on or before the date that is set in Election Maintenance for Election Date. The EDR respects the 30 days prior to election day deadline because it is calculated as 30 days from the Registration Date.
• For Primary elections, a party affiliation that matches the party that is assigned to the election.

Supplements also include voters who were included on the original register, provided they are still eligible to vote in the election. Certain changes made to those voters since the original register was generated are reflected in the supplement.

You will need to generate supplements after changes are made to voters' ballot style, assigned precinct, record details, or voting activity.