How to

Email Sample Ballots to Voters

Sample ballots can be emailed automatically to voters who have requested receipt of their sample ballots by email. The voter’s sample ballot is provided in the form of a URL link within the email. Clicking this link takes the voter to the PDF on your county's website for the voter's ballot style. For voters with protected addresses, the URL link takes them to Precinct Finder where they can enter their street address and thus access their sample ballot PDF.

A record that the email was sent is inserted on the Comms tab in the voter's record.

Voter Focus determines which voters have requested emailed ballots and, once they have been emailed, maintains a record of who has been sent an email, so previous recipients won’t receive a duplicate.

Emailing a sample ballot does not automatically remove a voter from sample-ballot runs in FlexRep, which is separate from the automatic-email feature described here. Voters who have requested delivery of their sample ballot by email are included in the FlexRep export file for the output option Text File Export for Commercial Printer. If you prefer to remove these voters before the file goes to the printer, sort on the field Sample_Ballots_By_Email and remove the voters whose value in this field is Y.

Sample-ballots emails are sent automatically by Voter Focus, with no action required on the user’s part, once this feature has been set up. The system looks for voters who haven't been sent an email once a day, around 6 pm.

Note  If VRScheduler is not running when the system looks for voters, it will do so when the program is restarted, and sample-ballot emails will be sent at that time.

Once the setup is complete, voters meeting these three criteria will then receive an email linking them to their sample ballot:

• The voter has a valid email address in the Email Address field on the Maint tab of their record. (Sample ballots are emailed only to those email addresses, not to addresses on the Vote-by-Mail tab.)

• The voter’s record has the Receive Sample Ballots by Email option selected on the Maint tab.

• The voter's status must be Active or Inactive. Voter's whose status is Pending or Ineligible will not receive a sample ballot.

To set up the automatic emailing of sample ballots to voters who request this service:

1. Define all ballot styles for the election in ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Ballot Styles > Set Up Ballots Styles.

2. Create and save the sample ballots in individual PDF files—one PDF for each ballot style—and place the PDF(s) in this folder:

I:\Vr6Sharedbinaries\MAIS\Ballots

The naming convention for sample ballot PDFs is:

<election number>-<ballot style>.PDF

where <election number> is the election number and <ballot style> is the ballot style. For example, for election 394, the PDF file name for ballot style R012 would be:

394-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 rather than 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.

The VRScheduler - UpdateWebHosting.exe program will automatically transfer the sample ballot PDFs to the appropriate location on the web server. This can take some time, depending on the number and size of the sample-ballot files. It should not take more than three hours.

Note  To replace an existing sample-ballot file with a newer version, simply replace the file in the \MAIS\Ballots folder. The new version should appear within three hours.

3. Set up the email message text and the sender’s address. Note that this part of the setup applies to all elections where you have turned on the option to email sample ballots (step 4).

   1. Go to ELECTIONS > Election Utilities > Set Up Sample-Ballot Email. On the Set Up Sample-Ballot Email dialog, in the Reply/From Address field, select the email account that voters will see as the sender’s address on the email.

Note  The addresses in the drop-down list are maintained in VOTER FOCUS ADMIN > System Options > Email > Add Email Account, so if you don’t see the address you want to use, go there and add it. Then repeat this step before continuing.

1. 2. In the box Edit Text of Sample-Ballot Email Message, enter the message to go out with the email. On the right side of the pane (under Click to insert variable text), you’ll see a list of variable-text entries you can use in the message. These variables are replaced with the actual text when the email is sent. See Set Up Sample-Ballot Email for a description of each variable.

1. 3. When you’ve finished editing the message text, click Save. Then click Close to close the dialog.

4. Test that the emails are set up properly:

1. Go to ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Sample Ballots > Send a Sample-Ballot Test Email to display the Send a Test Sample-Ballot dialog, which shows the text of the email as it will appear to voters.

2. Check that each of the variables used on the Set Up Sample-Ballot Email dialog has been replaced with the information you intended.

3. For the variable [BallotURL], which is the link to the ballot PDF on your website, copy the replacement text for the variable. It will be a string like this:

http://www.voterfocus.com/WHSampleBallot.php?county=BRE&fvrsid=123456789&election=567

Paste the string into your browser's address field and change the text:

123456789

to a known voter ID. Then refresh the browser and you should see the sample ballot PDF for that voter.

4. If you see problems in the test email, go back to step 3 and fix them.

5. In the To Address field, enter your email address.

6. Click Send Test Email.

7. Verify that the email arrived in your inbox.

4. Turn on emailing of sample ballots for a specific election:

   1. Verify that the election where you want to email sample ballots is displayed as the focused election on the Console. If it isn’t, click Change Election Focus and select the election you want.

   2. Go to ELECTIONS > Maintain Election Settings > Sample Ballots > Setup Sample Ballot Emailing.

   3. At the bottom of the Set Up Sample-Ballot Emailing for This Election dialog, click Check Ballot Files. You will see a list of the ballot styles for the election in the Ballot Style File Checker pane. Next to the ballot-style name is the PDF file name expected by Voter Focus. And next to that is the Exists column, which shows whether the file is located in the correct place on your network (that is, I:\Vr6Sharedbinaries\MAIS\Ballots). Verify that all ballot styles are displaying True in this column. If not, go back to step 1, above, and check that your file names are correct. If you are certain that the file names are correct and you placed the files in the folder I:\Vr6Sharedbinaries\MAIS\Ballots more than three hours ago, contact VR Systems to troubleshoot the issue.

   4. Confirm that your ballot styles are on the website by going to the Precinct Finder on your website and looking at the sample ballots for several precincts.

   5. When you are certain that the sample ballot PDFs are on the website, select Sample Ballot Emailing Enabled and then click Save. Voter Focus will automatically begin emailing sample ballots to voters who have not yet received one for the focused election.