Create Vote-By-Mail Voter Labels for Candidates

• Have a Vote-By-Mail request in the system.

• Have been sent a mail ballot.

• Have picked up a mail ballot.

• Have protected addresses.

• Have already voted. For example, if a voter has returned a mail ballot or has early voted in the election, a label for that voter is not produced. However, voters who send in an advance ballot but not their mail ballot are included in the label run.

• Were included in a previous run for the same candidate.

Labels are created for Vote-By-Mail voters who are eligible to vote for the district that the candidate has specified. If the candidate also specifies a party, the labels will be limited to voters of that party.

Labels are ordered by zip code, and then by precinct and voter name. A header label indicates the start of a candidate's labels. The labels are followed by two trailer labels showing the number of labels printed for the candidate. The trailer labels are identical. One can be given to the candidate; the other retained for billing purposes. If the candidate requests a text file rather than printed labels, there is no header label, but the trailer labels are printed to assist your office with billing for this service.

Voter Focus maintains a record of the Vote-By-Mail voters in previous label runs for a candidate, so if a candidate requests another label run, the previously included voters will not be included in the new run. This lets candidates request label runs repeatedly without getting duplicate labels.

When creating labels, you have the option of limiting the output to voters with UOCAVA status for the election, which can be useful early in an election cycle.

To create candidate labels, the user must have the permission CandidateLabels.

• Set up a candidate record in Voter Focus and specify what kind of labels they want. See How to Set Up Candidates for Voter Labels/Files for instructions on the label set-up process.

• Inspect the document specification to verify the information on the labels, the label layout including label margins, and the printer used to print them is what you want. The document layout for candidate labels—CandLabels—is maintained inPRINTING Document Maintenance.

• Select the fields to appear in the top line of each label by selecting an option in VOTER FOCUS ADMIN > System Options > Address Label Data Line Style.

• Make adjustments to page margins in VOTER FOCUS ADMIN > System Options > Avery Label Margins > Margins for Vote-By-Mail Labels > {Avery label number}

• If the candidate wants to retrieve their label files from your website, set up an account for them on the Candidate File Distribution service. See How to Give a Candidate Access to the Candidate File Distribution Service Your Website for instructions.

1. Verify that the focused election is the election in which the candidate is running.

2. Go to CANDIDATE SERVICES > Candidate Labels > Print Candidate Labels.

3. Select the format in which voter names will appear on the labels. To limit the output to UOCAVA voters, select Select Only UOCAVA Voters. (If this check box is not selected, all Vote-By-Mail voters will be included.) Click OK.

Voter Focus compiles a list of candidates who have requested labels for the election and the voters who will be included in this label run. (Voters who were included in a previous run for a candidate are not included in subsequent runs.) Candidates who have already had labels run for them, and for whom there are no new voters, do not appear. (Their label runs can be redone via the Reprint Candidate Labels feature.)

4. Highlight the candidate or candidates you want and click OK. To produce labels for multiple candidates in this run, press the Ctrl key while you click each candidate name to highlight it.

5. On the Windows Print dialog, select a printer and click Print. If the candidates you are processing requested printed labels, the labels will print, and you should skip to step 7.

6. If the candidate requested a data file (Disk), the Windows Open dialog displays the folder specified on the FlexRep program's Options dialog as the Path for Export Work Files. The name in the File name field has the format:

<candidate name><YYYYMMDD><HHMM>.txt

If you want the data file to be sent to the Candidate File Distribution service on your website, the file name must not be changed. However you will want to ensure that the folder shown on the Open dialog is the one you created on the I drive to hold candidate files for transfer to the website by the VRScheduler - UpdateWebHosting.exe program.

Click Open to save the file. The trailer labels will print.

7. Inspect the printed labels or the data file to verify you have what you need. If all is in order, click OK in response to the message Is it alright to update the database. This updates the candidate's record indicating that labels have been produced for them. If you created a data file, it is ready to be emailed to the candidate, copied to portable media, or they are added to the queue to be posted to your website.

8. VRScheduler - UpdateWebHosting.exe runs every 20 minutes on your server to pick up candidate files and post them to the website. If you want to post a file immediately, you can do it manually. See How to Manually Post a Candidate File to Your Website for instructions.

If after creating the labels or data file, you need to reproduce them, see Reprint Candidate Labels for instructions.