Send a Notice of Elections to Permanent Vote-By-Mail Voters

1. Compose the notice as a mail merge document.
2. Create a document specification for the notice.
3. Generate a list of the voters who will receive the notice.
4. Print the notice for each voter in the list.

For this task, you'll need a working knowledge of Microsoft Word, in particular the process of creating a mail merge document. Consult Word help if you have questions about mail merge.

To create a mail merge document:

1. In Microsoft Word, compose the Notice of Elections, inserting your letterhead and any graphics to be printed on the notice. For the places where you want to insert data from the merge file, leave a blank space or a note about what information is needed.

Here's an example of the initial draft of a Notice of Elections before the merge data fields have been entered. The text in red will later be replaced by the data fields.

2. Using Word's Mail Merge feature, connect to the data file MrgVoters.txt. This is Voter Focus's mail-merge data file for all its standard recipient lists. The file can be found in the folder \Vr6Sharedbinaries, which is usually on the I drive. You don't need to sort the list or select any records. Voter Focus will do that for you later.

3. Insert the merge data fields into the Notice of Elections. The data fields in the Voter Focus data file are described here.

Here's an example of our Notice of Elections after the data fields have been inserted. The fields are shown in red to make them easier to see. Normally, the fields are not colored differently, unless you prefer to select a text color in the final output.

4. Preview the Notice of Elections to verify it has the data you want and that all data fields have been replaced by live data. The data you see comes from a dummy record in the Voter Focus data file. When you print the letter to the recipient list, the dummy data is replaced by data for your recipients.

Here's an example of the previewed file. The dummy data you see might be different from what appears here, depending on the version of the MrgVoters.txt file. As long as the correct type of data appears in each merge field, you are OK.

5. Save the Word document in the folder \Vr6Sharedbinaries\Docs. It's important that you save it in this location so Voter Focus can find it later. The document in our example is named Notice of Elections.doc.

Note:  If you modify the mail merge document, be sure to use Microsoft Word to make the modifications. Don't open and save the document in a different application; you will likely lose the mail-merge data.

A document specification gives Voter Focus information about the Notice of Elections so it can print the notice whenever you need. Voter Focus needs to know, for example, where the notice is stored, if address labels should also be printed, and whether voter records in the database should be updated to show that the notice was sent to them.

To create a document specification:

1. Go to Printing > Document Maintenance.
2. Select Notice of Elections and click Select Document.
3. On the Document Maintenance dialog, fill out the fields listed below.

   Word Document Name	Browse to \Vr6Sharedbinaries\Docs and select the name of the Word file containing the notice.
   Print Mail Merge Document	Select this option.
   Print Address Labels	Select this option if you want to print an address label for each notice produced by the mail merge operation. The labels are formatted for laser printing to a sheet of 3-up labels.

   

4. Click the Printer Info tab and, if needed, click Change Printer to select a new default printer. Leave the Printer Name field blank if you want to select a printer at the time you print each notice.
5. Click Save and close the Document Maintenance dialog.

Next, we will find all the voters whose absentee status is Permanent and schedule them a Notice of Elections.

To generate a list of Permanent absentee voters and schedule them for the notice:

1. Go to Reporting > Flexible Reports.

2. On the FlexRep menu, select Voter Register in the Data Source box.

3. In the Output Option box, select Voter Focus Document.

4. On the Select Document to Print dialog, scroll down until you see Notice of Elections. Highlight it and click OK. You'll see that Notice of Elections is now displayed in the Output Option box under Voter Focus Document.

5. In the Address Selection box, we recommend you select Mailing Address, unless your county's procedures specify use of the default absentee address.

6. In the Record Selection box, click Status, Birthdate, Registration Date to open the Select Voter dialog. In the upper-right corder of the dialog, select Permanent Absentees. Click Close.

7. Click Run FlexRep to compile the list of voters and schedule them the Notice of Elections. You will then see a message like this:



8. Click OK.

The final step is to print the scheduled notices and update voter records to record the notices are sent.

To print the Notice of Elections for each voter:

1. Go to Printing > Notices Queue and find the entry Notice of Elections under Notice Type.

Note:
• If you gave the document specification a different name than Notice of Elections, find that name instead.
• The number shown in the Number column should be at least as large as the number of notices you just scheduled in FlexRep. If other notices of elections were scheduled previously by you, the number will be larger.
• If you want to print the Notice of Elections scheduled by other users as well as yourself, select Show All Operators' Notices.
2. Select the precincts for the notice and click OK to continue. Remember that leaving the Precincts Selected pane empty selects all precincts.
3. If the number of notices is large and you want to divide the printing into smaller, more manageable batches, use the Maximum Notices to Print field to specify the number to print for this run.
4. If you want the notices sorted by zip code or some other criterion, select an option in the Sort Option box.
5. If you did not specify a printer when you set up the document specification, you are prompted to select a printer. The number of notices you selected are sent to the printer and you are prompted to update each voter record with a note that a notice was sent.
6. Click Update to insert the note in voter records. This also removes the scheduled notice for these voters from the Notices Queue. If you click Cancel, the notices remain in the queue and voter records are not updated.