Notices for a Commercial Printer

From the Notices Queue, you can create a file of voters scheduled to receive a notice. This file can then be given to a commercial printer for printing of the notices.

Exporting of notices can only be done for notices whose document type is Form.

Note:  If your objective is printing notices in-house from Voter Focus, refer instead to Print a Notice.

  1. Go to PRINTING > Notices Queue.

  2. Optionally, change the name in the Operator field if you want to display notices for a different operator or select the Show All Operator's Notices to display all notices currently scheduled. (If these options don't appear, you do not have the necessary permissions to do this.)

  3. In the list of notices, select the row for the notice you want and click Select Notice (or double-click the row).

  4. To export only the notices scheduled for one or more precincts, highlight the precinct IDs in the Precincts not Selected pane and use the right arrow button to move them to the Precincts Selected pane.

To export the notices for all precincts, click the double-right arrow to move all precincts to the Precincts Selected pane or just leave the Precincts Selected pane empty.

Click OK.

  1. On the Print Notice Run Parameters dialog:

To limit the number of notices included in the export file, enter a number in Maximum Notices to Print.

To limit the notices to those that were scheduled during a particular time period, select Select Notices by Date Range.

Select Export to External Printing Service.

If the commercial printer has asked that the export file be sorted—by zip code, for instance—select an option in the Sort Option box.

Click OK.

  1. If you are exporting voter information cards:

    1. You will be asked to enter the last registration date of cards to be printed. We suggest you accept the default of today’s date unless you are printing cards after book closing and don't want to send cards to new voters who were registered after book closing. If this is the case, enter the book closing date.

    2. The Select Notice Reasons dialog appears, displaying the text messages that can be printed on the cards. These messages are defined in VOTER FOCUS ADMIN > System Options > VIC Options. For this voter card run, the messages shown here can be customized with no effect on the system defaults. For example, if the cards are going to voters whose polling place has changed, you might add a message drawing attention to this fact.

    Remember, to print a text message on the card, the database field for the text message must be present on the document layout. For example, to print the message specified for Voter Card Message 1, the database field VCrdMsg1 must be on the document layout.

    1. In the Select the Reasons you want printed box , you would typically select Printed through FlexRep for a mass mailing, but you can select other reasons to send cards to those voters as well.

    2. Click OK.

  1. If you are sorting the run by zip code, you will see a list of the zip codes found and the count of notices for each zip code. If your printer requested a zip code sort, you might find it useful to print this list (click Print Image of this Dialog).

With a zip code sort, you have the option of generating the export file for the entire list or selecting one zip code and generating an export file containing just the records for that zip code. To select one zip code, highlight it and click OK. You must repeat the procedure described in this topic to export the notices in the other zip codes; each run creates a new export file.

To include the entire list of notices in the export file, make sure no individual zip code is highlighted before you click OK.

  1. On the Windows Save As dialog, select the location for the export file. The default location displayed is the folder specified in REPORTING > Flexible Reports > FlexRep Options > Path for Export Work Files, but you can change the location for this run to another folder.

The default file name is:

NoticesExportyyynnnn.txt

where yyyy is the current year and nnnn is the today’s date and time. If you like, change the default to a name that will better identify the file to the commercial printer, such as:

<your county name> Voter Cards.txt

  1. Click Save to create the export file. Depending on the size of your database, this will take some time. The status bar at the bottom of the Notices Queue dialog indicates the number of records processed. If you did not do a zip code sort, make a note of this number so you can give the commercial printer a count of the number of cards in the export file.

  2. Locate the export file and open it with Notepad, Excel, or Access.

    3. Important: Check the export file carefully to be sure it contains all the voter records you expected and that all other items are correct.

If there is a problem, click Cancel in response to the message Is it OK to update the database with printed records?. Do not click Update. Then fix the problem and regenerate the export file by repeating this procedure from step 1. Depending on what the problem is, you might need to reschedule the cards before you regenerate the export file. Contact VR Systems Customer Support if you need help with these tasks.

  1. When you are certain the export file is good, click Update in response to the message Is it OK to update the database with printed records?. It’s important that you do an update when you have a good export file that you intend to send out. Clicking Update adds a communication entry to each voter's record and removes their notice from the Notices Queue. You should not click Updateuntil you are sure the export file is correct and complete.

The file is now ready for delivery to your commercial printer.

There may be times after exporting a notice to a commercial printer, you find an error in voter data during your review of the printed notice. In this case, you may consider doing a reprint of the notice but question if your change will be reflected in the reprint.

The answer depends on the field that you change. Some fields—like the voter's address—are reprinted with the most current information. In other cases, the Reprint a Notice program looks at the database and will pick up any updates.

Consider calling VR Systems before proceeding with a reprint to determine your best option. If we conclude that a new print run, rather than a reprint, is required, we also consider the note that was inserted in the voter's record by the first print run indicating they were sent the notice. A second print run will add another note, so one of those notes must be removed.