Last Updated: 12/12/2023

Give a Candidate Access to the GOTV Report on Your Website

If your county has a VR Tower website, certain files—including the EViD Get Out the Vote (GOTV) report—can be automatically posted to the website for retrieval by candidates. The files are placed in a secure area accessible only to the candidate with a login account created by the elections office.

Prior to creating the GOTV report, you will need to set up each candidate with a website account and set the option to receive the report. Then you will need to set up the report to automatically place a copy on your website for retrieval by candidates with a properly set-up account. Both procedures are described below.

If the candidate already has a login account for the Candidate Financial Reporting web service, they can use that account to access the files, but you will need to follow the procedure below to attach their Voter Focus record to the account. If the candidate does not have a login account for Candidate Financial Reporting, the procedure below will create one.

Set Up a Candidate to Retrieve the GOTV Report from Your Website

Verify that you can access the internet from your workstation.
If the candidate does not have a record for this election in the Voter Focus database, create a record for them. See the Voter Focus Help topic How to Maintain Candidates for Elections for instructions. (To access Voter Focus Help, run the Voter Focus Console or any Voter Focus application and press the F1 key on your keyboard.)

If the candidate already has a record, go to the Voter Focus Console, run the Elections application and select the election. On the Elections dialog, click Candidates. The List of Candidates dialog appears, showing any candidates who are already set up for this election. Highlight the candidate name and click Maintain Candidate.

If the option Absentee Labels Required is not selected, select it now. Additional controls for setting up the delivery of information to the candidate will appear on the dialog.

In the Candidate Label Options box, select Data File. This will ensure that a file is created that can be posted to the website.
In the District field, select the district type matching the candidate's race or select ALL for all voters in the county who have not yet voted.
In the District Number field, field, select the appropriate district number. If you selected All in the District field, select 1 in the District Number field.
If the election is a primary, the Party field is displayed. Select a party from the drop-down list to limit the voters to that party. If you want all voters, regardless of party, leave the Party field blank.
If the candidate does not have an account in the VR Tower Interface box, skip to step 9.

If the candidate already has a login account on the Candidate Financial Reporting module, click Attach. Voter Focus will search the Candidate Financial Reporting module and display any candidates by the same name on the Possible Web Candidates dialog. Highlight the candidate you want and click Select to insert the candidate's data in the Website Candidate ID, Password, and Election fields.

A dialog with a message similar to this might appear if the candidate information stored in the Candidate Financial Reporting module does not exactly match the candidate information in Voter Focus. For example, if the candidate's name or address is not spelled the same.

To copy the information from the Candidate Financial Reporting module to Voter Focus, click Yes. Click No to leave the Voter Focus information as it is. You can change either record later, if you want.

Skip to step 10.

If the candidate does not have an account in the VR Tower Interface box:
1. Click New. This will enter the code Pending in the Website Candidate ID field, which indicates a new account is to be created.
2. In the Password field, enter a password for the new candidate account. New passwords must meet the following requirements:
  - Password must be more than 8 characters in length.
  - Password cannot be the user's current password.
  - Password cannot be the word password.
  - Password cannot include any county name.
  - Password cannot be commonly used phrases or passwords.
3. In the Election field, select the election that the candidate should be assigned to. Note that the list of elections here will not necessarily match the list of elections in Voter Focus. The list here is created in the Candidate Financial Reporting module, and there is no connection between it and the Voter Focus list.
Select Provide Early Voter Details. This gives the candidate access to the Get Out the Vote report as well as the two early voting files (Early Voting Voters List and Early Voting Summary) sent to the State on a daily basis before the election.

Note: If the candidate also wants access to the daily Absentee Information File, select Provide Absentee Status File.

Click OK to save your work. If the candidate did not already have a web services account, clicking OK also creates for them a unique web services ID, which will replace the code Pending in the Website Candidate ID field.
Note the website candidate ID and the password so that you can give it to the candidate. They will be able to log in to your county's website and pick up Get Out the Vote report and other files using this ID and password.