Process Applications Suspended to Your County

Voter registration applications that have been suspended to your county appear in the Suspense Queue. From the queue, you can review individual applications and complete processing on them.

Applications can be suspended to your county by:

  • your own county
  • another county
  • the Department of State
  • HSMV

The suspending agency will be listed in the From column of the Suspense Queue. If the agency is HSMV, you’ll see DMV in the From field.

Suspending entities other than HSMV are required to scan and mail the paper applications to your county so you will have the opportunity to review them.

Suspended applications, including those from HSMV, should contain a signature clip. If a signature clip isn’t included, you’ll see this message when you select an application from the Suspense Queue:

FVRS does not yet have a signature clip for this application. Select Yes to process anyway, No to try this application later.

Generally speaking, it’s preferable to postpone processing of a suspended application until a signature clip is provided, but your county might take a different approach. For example, if a registered voter submits an address change through HSMV, and their record already contains a signature clip, you could process the suspended application without the signature clip from HSMV, provided that you are certain you have the right voter.

  1. Go to VOTER REGISTRATION > Suspense Queue. Voter Focus will query FVRS for all items suspended to your county and display them in the Suspense Queue. Items can include voter registration applications and third-party address changes.
    • To sort the grid, click any column header.
    • The column labeled In Date shows the date the record was suspended. This is also called the suspense date.
  2. To see only the applications, select Applications in the lower left corner of the dialog.
  3. To search for specific records, enter name and/or ID criteria in the filters above the grid. You can enter complete or partial criteria.
  4. To retrieve a suspended application, double-click its line in the list. FVRS will do an application search for any voters statewide having a match with the suspended application.

    If matching records are found, they will be displayed in a color-coded list on the Voter at a Glance dialog. See Records in the Database Are a Possible Match to the Suspended Application for further instructions on processing the suspended application.

    If the applicant is not found by the application search, the voter application form for a new voter will appear, with the data from the suspended application pre-filled in the form.

  5. To see why the application was suspended to your county, click FVRS Suspend. Review the Remarks field for information on why the application was suspended to your county.

  6. If you can accept the application, click Save. This will remove the application from the Suspense Queue..

If you cannot accept the application, or you weren't able to find a matching record, see the applicable topic for information:

No Record in the Database Matches the Suspended Application

Records in the Database Are a Possible Match to the Suspended Application

Duplicate Suspended Applications Are Listed

Insufficient Information to Process a Suspended Application

Re-suspend an Application to Another County or DOS

Note:  If you get the following message when selecting a suspense record that was created while in Disconnected Mode or when FVRS was down:

FVRS record has changed since this Offline Transaction was prepared

It is a flag that the record has changed in both places: on the county record and on FVRS. You can click OK to dismiss the message, but exercise care in processing this suspense record.

The Department of Motor Vehicles will scan three images into their system and send to FVRS. These images include:

  • Voter Registration Application
  • DMV Renewal Form
  • Envelope Image

One, all, or none of the forms will have relevant information on them. Voter Focus will retrieve these images from FVRS and place the images in the Suspense Queue for processing.

When the user selects a record from the Suspense Queue, three images will be displayed on a new dialog. The FVRS Scanned Applications radio button will be enabled if scanned applications are available on the record.

To process these images:

  1. Your county will need to determine how and if these images need processing. When you select a record from the Suspense Queue, the first image presented will be the new Voter Registration Application Form.
    1. To process any changes, navigate to the Application Forms program. For more information, view the Scan Application Forms and Other Documents topic.
  2. Click the View Renewal button to cycle to the next image, which will be the HSMV Renewal Form.
    1. To process any changes, navigate to the Record Correspondence from Voter dialog. For more information, view the Correspondence from Voter topic.
  3. Click the View Envelope button to cycle to the last image, which will be the HSMV Renewal Form Envelope, and will display the date stamp from the post office, if needed. For more information, view the Index Scanned Images to Voter Records topic.
  4. Once all images have been viewed, two new buttons, Remove from Queue and Save, will appear in the bottom right corner of the dialog. To save and index images to a voter's record, select the applicable check boxes (Index Renewal and Index Envelope), enter the voter's ID in the Voter ID field and the voter's birth year in the Birth Year field, then click Save to index the images to the voter's record. Click Remove from Queue to discard the images and remove them from the Suspense Queue.

  5. Voter Focus will always automatically index the Voter Registration Application Form. If you select the Index Renewal or Index Envelope check boxes, the selected image(s) will also be indexed to the voter's record. After processing, confirm that all desired images have been indexed to the voter's record. Indexed images will appear under the voter's Comms tab with communication types reflecting "Scanned Front of Card Img" for the Voter Registration Application Form, "DMV Renewal Form" for the HSMV Renewal Form, and "DMV Renewal Form Envelope" for the HSMV Renewal Form Envelope.