Last Update: April 21, 2016

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Setting Up Ballot Styles for an Election

A ballot style is a list of issues and candidates on a ballot that is tailored for the voters in a particular precinct, group of precincts, or city.

One of the first tasks to accomplish when setting up an election in Voter Focus is to create the ballot styles and assign them to precincts. This task can be completed in Elections > Maintain Election Settings > Ballot Styles > Set Up Ballot Styles on the List of Ballot Styles dialog.

Note  If your county imports your ballot styles into Voter Focus from a third-party system used to print ballots, rather than entering the ballot styles manually, see Ballot-Printing Setup for ES&S Unity or Ballot-Printing Setup for Dominion GEMS for instructions on importing ballot styles from these systems.

You must complete this task before you can send out mail ballots or print a precinct register.

Note  If you receive a request for candidate labels before you have set up the ballot styles for an election, you can create temporary ballot styles, which will allow you to fulfill the candidate's request. See How to Set Up Temporary Ballot Styles for an Election for instructions.

In general elections, each precinct and precinct split will have a unique ballot style assigned to it. For primary elections, there should be a separate ballot style for each political party voting in the precinct and one for no-party-affiliation (Npa) voters.

We recommend you include the precinct number in the ballot-style name. For example, in a general election, the ballot style for precinct 1 might be named G1. In a primary, the ballot styles for precinct 1 might be:

R1 for Republican voters

D1 for Democratic voters

N1 for Npa voters

Including the precinct number in the ballot-style name will help you provide precinct-specific election results, as required by law.

Up to five letters and numbers can be used for the name. As we noted above, you should select a name consistent with your county's ballot-style naming conventions, however please note our recommendation that you include the precinct number in the ballot-style name.

It is not necessary to create ballot styles for precincts or parties that are not voting in the election.

When crating ballot styles:

If the election is a primary, the Party drop-down list appears on the List of Ballot Styles dialog. The list shows the two major parties and Npa (for no-party-affiliation voters). If minor parties are selected on the Election Maintenance dialog, those parties are also available for selection. You will need to select the party for which this ballot style is being created. The selected party is sticky for the current session of the program, so that you can quickly create multiple ballot styles for the same party.

If the election includes the U.S. presidential/vice presidential race, you will need to create a ballot style for mail-ballot voters who moved out of Florida to another state after book closing for the election in their new state. (F.S. 101.663 entitles such voters to receive a mail ballot from their former Florida precinct. These voters must be designated by selecting the Fed Elections Only check box in the voter record.) The name for this ballot style can be anything up to five characters in length, but we suggest you use the name FED, or something similar, so the ballot style will be easy to find in reports. The federal-elections-only ballot style will be the same for all precincts.

Note  Prior to the assignment of ballot styles to precincts (and assignment of the federal election style for Fed Elections Only voters), voters who make a vote-by-mail request for the election will have XXX in the Style column on the Vote-by-Mail tab of their record. When the Deliver Ballots runs are performed (including runs that create export files for Pitney Bowes Relia-Vote and external mailing houses), the system will evaluate the voter's status, party, and precinct to determine their eligibility and ballot style. If the voter is eligible, the XXX placeholder will be replaced by the appropriate ballot style.

When you create your ballot styles, in the Next Ballot Number field, we suggest you let the ballots start at 1 unless your county has a different procedure. You can change the starting number any time later in the election cycle, if necessary. For example, if a group of ballots is smudged or damaged, you could change the next ballot number so that the system skips the numbers of the spoiled ballots. When mail-ballot labels or envelopes are printed, the beginning ballot number for the Deliver Ballots run will be picked up from the current value in the Next Ballot Number field. For each label/envelope produced, the ballot number in the field is incremented. Any numbers already used—such as those issued to in-office or pickup absentee voters—are skipped by the label/envelope run.

Note  When you receive your printed ballots, we strongly recommended that you set aside a batch of ballots for in-office/pickup absentee and early voting and that this batch come from the end of the numbers in the batch. This will reduce the possibility of the same ballot numbers being used for a Deliver Ballots run before the in-office/pickup/early ballot number is entered into Voter Focus.

If you later want to change something about a ballot style, such as the name, description, or number, highlight the style in the list of styles at the top half of the List of Ballot Styles dialog to display its options in the bottom half. Then enter the changes you want. If you modify the ballot-style name (that is, the value in the Ballot Style field) after precincts have been assigned to ballot styles, Voter Focus will automatically modify the ballot style name for that ballot style's precinct assignments, so you won't have to reassign the precinct to the changed ballot style.

See How to Set Up Ballot Styles for an Election for more information.

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