Using Voter Focus without FVRS

Like all computer systems, FVRS occasionally goes temporarily offline during the business day. You’ll know when this happens because the text (FVRS not available) or (without FVRS) will appear in the title bar of Voter Focus dialogs and when you start a Voter Focus program, you’ll see a message advising you that you are running without FVRS.

But an offline FVRS does not mean you can’t use Voter Focus. Many features are still operational. The table below lists the functions that are available and those that cannot be used when FVRS is down.

The Sandbox database is never connected to FVRS, so this table also serves as a good description of the activities you can perform when connected to Sandbox.

Area/Program	Available Functions	Functions Not Available
Candidate Services	All
Counter Program	Record early voting activities Record in-office absentee voting activities Make in-county address changes locally. (These changes are added to the Suspense Queue and must be processed after FVRS becomes available to update the voter's address on the State system.)	Make address changes that move voters into or out of the county Perform FVRS lookups on voter records
Election Activities	Generate precinct registers Run reports Set up ballot styles for existing elections	Set up new elections
FlexRep Program	All
List Maintenance Activities	Run reports	Inactivate voters Activate 18-year-olds Convert status of Inactive voters to Ineligible
NCOA Processing	Export data file to NCOA Import NCOA Response Spreadsheet	Auto-Process Zip Code Updates from NCOA
Scheduling and Printing Notices	All
Petition Activities	Verify local petitions	Verify statewide petitions Make address changes
Phone Bank Program	All except those using FVRS lookups.	Perform FVRS lookups
Place Maintenance	All
Election Workers	All except lookup records of out-of-county workers registered in another county.
Precinct Maintenance	All
Public Program	All
Streets Activities	Perform street lookups Run reports	Update street data
Vote by Mail Activities	Record vote-by-mail requests Record all-elections requests for mail ballots Record in-office absentee voting activities Process vote-by-mail requests made on your website if the ballot address is in the US Update default ballot addresses Update specific-election ballot addresses Process vote-by-mail requests made on your website if the ballot address is outside the US Process FPCA applications and FPCA vote-by-mail requests
Voter Focus Admin	All except those related to redistricting.	Perform redistricting functions
Voter Card Program	All
Voter Label Program	All
Voter Lookup Program	All
Voter Registration Activities	Look up voter records on the county database Record early voting activities Record in-office absentee voting activities Make in-county address changes locally. (These changes are added to the Suspense Queue and must be processed after FVRS becomes available to update the voter's address on the State system.)	Process voter registration applications, including suspense applications Record a Voter Response * Make address changes that move voters into or out of the county * Perform FVRS lookups on voter records
Scanning and Indexing of Documents	All scanning activities. Index images to voter records. However, images are not sent to FVRS until the connection is restored.

* During an election, if FVRS goes down, you can still confirm a voter's registration on FVRS by using Voter Verify. This web service is particularly useful when helping move-in voters at the polls: you can verify their Florida registration and then allow them to go ahead and vote provisionally. (The actual address change in the voter's record will need to be made in the usual manner; it cannot be done via Voter Verify, which is simply a handy lookup tool.)

Voter Verify information for voter registration is up-to-date within two hours of a change for all counties using Voter Focus, even when FVRS is offline. You will also have access to similar information from the counties not using Voter Focus, as we augment our data for those counties with information taken from the latest monthly statewide voter extract file provided by the State.