RE: GEMS 1.7.5 vote centers

From: owner-bugtrack@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-bugtrack@dieboldes.com]On Behalf Of Nel Finberg

The attached GEMS 1.7.5 database is configured to recount the School District 2 amendment.

The vote center Count Method, Region and Filter may be changed in the Vote Center Editor even with the election set to 'Set for Election'.

The count method is allowed to change after set-for-election. Filter set should not though. Neither should be Id or Region. Whit, please take a look at those. Its 10 minutes to fix.

Changing a vote center's Count Method from AccuVote to Central Count does not reset the polling counter batches either under the Counter Information tab in the Vote Center Editor or in the manual entry dialog.

Changing the count method does not reset any existing counter batches by design. You can count some ballots for a vote center using memory cards and then count some more using central count or manual entry.

The Vote Center Editor, however, is not in good shape. We are aware of the problems, but the truth is they have never crept very far up the priority queue since no real-world problems situations have come up, and this is the first report from anyone. I'll list some of them off here for the record so people know to avoid them:

The Counter Information tab is just broken. It will be removed soon. If need to reset a memory card, do it in the upload dialog. If you need to delete a central count deck, do it in the central count dialog.
Changing the count method to central count (and probably manual entry) deletes the memory card batch, though it shouldn't. If you want to do central count and memory cards on the same vote center, switch to count method to central count and then change the number of memory cards. The memory cards will appear again. You need to do this all before set-for-election. After, don't touch it.
Switching to or from manual entry only is simply broken and deletes memory cards batches. There should be a "number of manual entry decks" just like memory cards. For now, only use manual entry only if you ONLY want to manually entry that vote center. Mixing manual entry with other types is broken.
Increasing the number of memory cards after set-for-election is allowed, but decreasing should not. We don't prevent a decrease right now.
Increasing the number of memory cards while upload is running, programing those memory cards, and then uploading that card, will probably crash upload. Don't do that.

Hmmm, now that I see this list, I think we'll just disable changing the number of memory cards or count method after set-for-election for now. Whit, get those too please. The reason these never come up is that no one touches the vote center editor after set-for-election. Preventing users from doing this won't fix the oddities for before set-for-election though. I'll re-write the Vote Center Editor when I get a chance. Sorry about these folks; "I didn't write the first one" is my only excuse.

Before ballots have been fed in the absentee and absentee 2 vote centers, attempting to perform manual entry on the vote centers results in the error Vote Center is not in this region, even when logged on as admin in the host region, with the two vote centers defined to the host region. The count method for both vote centers is central count. Once ballots have been centrally counted in the vote centers manual entry may be performed. The same message appears when attempting to perform manual entry on each vote center category's default vote center.

There are two kinds of manual entry. One kind we can call "Pure Manual Entry", where a new counter batch is created explicitly for the purpose of receiving manual entered results. An example of this is Alaska. You use the "Manual Entry Only" count method for this type. The second kind of manual entry is called "Manual Modification". With this type, users can modify existing counter batches. For example central count decks after they have been fed, or memory cards after they have been uploaded.

What you did was try and do a manual modification of a central count vote center that has no decks yet comitted. This meant there was no counter batches to do manual entry on. Similarly, the default vote centers each have no report precincts. Manual modification is done on report precincts, so again there was nothing to modify. The error message was written for a third similar case: where there are no counter batches in the region of the logged in user. I'll change the error message to read "No Counters Available to Modify" to be generic to all cases.

Ken