Provide Sample Ballots for Precinct Finder and Voter Information Lookup

This topic explains how to set up access to sample ballot images from Precinct Finder, MAIS Voter Information Lookup, and the Preview Sample Ballots button on the Elections tab in voter records.

To give voters access to their sample ballots from the Voter Information page in Precinct Finder, you will need to create and save the sample ballots in individual PDF files and place the PDF(s) to a network folder.

Create the Sample Ballots

You begin the process by creating the sample ballots for the election and saving them in individual files that can be accessed by voters.

For each precinct or precinct split, create a PDF file containing the precinct’s sample ballot. If the election is a primary, create multiple PDFs for each precinct. That is, one for each party’s sample ballot.

The sample ballot PDFs must conform to the following naming convention:

<election number>-<ballot style>.pdf

For example, for election 396, the PDF file name for ballot style R012 would be:

396-R012.pdf

The ballot style names must match the ballot style names in ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Ballot Styles > Set Up Ballot Styles.

If all voters in an election will be given the same physical ballot—with exactly the same races, candidates, and issues—instead of duplicating the same sample ballot PDF for each ballot style, you have the option of having only a single PDF with the name:

<election number>-ALL.PDF

When the software is looking for the PDF to email to a voter, it looks first for a PDF named <election number>-<ballot style>.PDF. If it does not find one, it will send <election number>-ALL.PDF.

Save the PDFs to Your Network Folder

Save the sample ballot PDFs in this folder:

I:\Vr6Sharedbinaries\MAIS\Ballots

Files Are Uploaded Automatically

The VRScheduler - UpdateWebHosting.exe program will automatically transfer these files to the web server. The file transfer can take some time, depending on the number and size of the sample ballot files. VRScheduler - UpdateWebHosting.exe runs every 20 minutes.

Once the sample ballot PDFs are present in the \Ballots folder, the website will display the correct ballot style for each election, precinct, and party, based on the assignment of ballot styles to precincts in Voter Focus in ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Ballot Styles > Assign Ballot Styles to Precincts.

Replacing an Existing Sample Ballot File

When the VRScheduler - UpdateWebHosting.exe program copies a sample ballot file to the web server, it places a text file of the name:

<sample ballot file name>.TXT

in the folder I:\Vr6Sharedbinaries\MAIS\Ballots. The presence of this text file tells VRScheduler - UpdateWebHosting.exe not to expend system resources in recopying the sample ballot file because it’s already on the web server.

To replace an existing sample ballot file with a newer version, simply replace the PDF file in the \Ballots folder and delete the TXT file associated with that PDF. The new version should appear within three hours.