Create a Redistricting Database

The Redistricting database is a copy of your Voter Focus database that can be used after congressional redistricting to update street segment, precinct, and district data, and perform testing on the new setup. In this new database you can:

  • Run reports to verify voter totals per precinct/city.
  • Create new districts and precincts
  • Assign districts to precincts/precinct splits
  • Delete districts that are no longer valid
  • Run Redistricting Update and review the report

When you are certain the data on the Redistricting database is fully reflective of the new congressional districts, you can then copy the street tables from the Redistricting database to the live production (Normal or VR6) database using the Copy Street Tables to Live DB program.

Tip: Prior to copying the streets data to your Production database, unschedule Voter Information Card that may be in the Notices Queue.

The Redistricting database does not connect to FVRS, so it can be used regardless of whether FVRS is running and can be regenerated whenever the county has the need.

The Redistricting database is called Vr6Redist. It is created by copying a recent full backup of the production (Vr6) database.

If you have an existing version of the Redistricting database and you want to refresh it with the latest information, simply create the Redistricting database as you did the first time. The existing Redistricting database will be completely replaced by the new version.

  1. On the server where the backup of the production database was made, ensure that you are using the production database. If not, in the top-right corner of the Console, click the Database drop-down list and select Normal Database.

  2. Go to STREETS & PRECINCTS > Redistricting > Copy DB to Redistricting > Create Redistricting Database.

This displays a list of recent backups of the production database with the most recent one highlighted. You can change to an earlier backup, if there is some reason to not use the most-recent, but typically you will use the most recent one. Below the backup list, you'll see the default location where the two files making up the database will be stored when the Redistricting database is created/recreated. Under normal circumstances, you don't need to change this location.

  1. Click Create Database.

If this button is disabled, it means one or more users are using the Sandbox database. To find out who the users are, click Cancel and then click Show Current Usage on the Console to display a list of your databases and the operator names currently using them. Once the Sandbox users have exited Voter Focus or switched to another database, you can repeat this procedure from step 1.

  1. If a Redistricting database already exists on your system, you are asked to confirm you want to replace it with a new one. Click Yes to start the database creation process. You'll see a progress bar and, when the Redistricting database is ready for use, the message Success!. Click Cancel to finish.

  2. To use the Redistricting database, in the top-right corner of the Console, click the Database drop-down list and select Redistricting Database.