Set Up Temporary Ballot Styles for an Election

The temporary ballot style feature lets you generate Vote-By-Mail requests for all-elections/FPCA voters before assignment of an election's permanent ballot styles. This feature is important if your county receives requests for candidate labels early in an election cycle, and candidates want their label set to include all-elections/FPCA voters as well as single-request voters. Prior to the implementation of temporary ballot styles, this wasn't possible, because the program that generates all-elections/FPCA requests requires the assignment of ballot styles to generate those requests. With temporary ballot styles assigned, you can provide candidates with labels for allVote-By-Mail voters in their district, meeting their requests in a timely manner without having to create permanent ballot styles prematurely.

Setup of temporary ballot styles is simple: you don't have to create them and assign them to precincts like permanent ballot styles. The system does the work for you when you select the Probably Voting option on the Election Precinct Details dialog for each voting precinct. Selecting Probably Voting automatically assigns these standard temporary ballot styles to the precinct:

For general elections, GXX

For primary elections, (as appropriate):

DXX for Democrats

RXX for Republicans

GXX for non-partisan voters

SXX for minor party 1 voters

OXX for minor party 2 voters

Once you've selected Probably Voting, you'll see the temporary ballot style in the Style column on the voter's Vote-By-Mail tab on any new requests that are added. When the value in the Style column is XXX, it means no ballot style was defined at the time the request was added.

Temporary ballots styles are replaced with permanent ballot styles when you assign the permanent ones to precincts. It isn't necessary to clear the Probably Voting check box when you assign permanent ballot styles. You should be aware that you won't see the permanent ballot styles in voter records until:

  • You do a Deliver Ballots run that includes those voters.
  • You run the utility Update Voter Ballot Styles, which examines each voter with a Vote-By-Mail request for the focused election, determines what their current ballot style should be, and updates the voter's record with the current ballot style.

Mail ballots cannot be sent out—that is, you won't be able to do a Deliver Ballots run—until permanent ballot styles are assigned.

The existence of temporary ballot styles also enables your county to transmit the daily Absentee Ballot Request Information File to FVRS.

  1. Ensure that the election for which you want to use temporary ballot styles is the focused election. If not, click Change Election Status on the Console and select the election.
  2. Go to ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Ballot Styles > Assign Ballot Styles to Precincts.
  3. If this election has both Vote-By-Mail Requests and Advance Ballots selected on the Election Maintenance dialog, the Select Ballot Type dialog opens. Select Vote-By-Mail Ballots and click OK.
  4. On the Election Precinct Details dialog, highlight the first precinct or precinct split where you want to set up a temporary ballot style.
  5. Select the check box Probably Voting. If the election is a primary, you will need to select Probably Voting for each party and for NPA voters.
  6. Click Close on the Maintain Election Settings dialog.
  7. Go to Vote-By-Mail > Vote-By-Mail Utilities > Generate All-Elections/FPCA Requests. This creates Vote-By-Mail requests for the election for all-elections and FPCA voters. The requests will have the temporary ballot styles assigned. Voters with existing Vote-By-Mail requests for the elections will automatically have the temporary ballot styles applied.
Note: You cannot rely on the daily background task (AbsenteeGenerateRequests, which runs around 5 am) to generate these Vote-By-Mail requests automatically unless the election's status is Active. If you are using temporary ballot styles, in all likelihood, your election's status is still set to Open. If that is the case, you must run the Generate All-Elections/FPCA Requests utility to generate requests.