The
difference between absentee ballots and polling ballots in Georgia is as
follows: The
polling ballot header reads “Official Ballot” while the absentee ballot reads “Official
Absentee Ballot”. The
instructions to the voter are significantly different (including a different
Code citation) and therefore, separate headers are created. Finally,
Georgia law specifically requires a different ballot for polling and absentee
(I’ll get the Code citations and language). The
@vgroup macro sounds intriguing for the “Official / Absentee Ballot” header. I
will also try creating the races with no candidates and associating each with
their respective vgroup2 (perhaps as a solution to the separate instructions
header problem). It’s a
dumb law, and this is the only place I’ve heard of that requires this, but here
we are. Of course, having the printer
typeset these things is available as a solution, although the Georgia customers
are not enamored of it. Tyler -----Original
Message----- From: Ken Clark
[mailto:ken@dieboldes.com] Gwinnett
County, Georgia would like to have seperate headers on their absentees although
their races are identical. This should be possible with voter group
specific headers, but isn't working. Okay, I
have reviewed this and it appears that GEMS unfortunately does not handle (and
has not ever)the above case. Significant headers can be used to put a
header on only the democratic ballot, but they cannot be
used to force a democratic ballot when there are no
democratic races. For
1.11 at least, the best I can offer is a work around. Create a race with
no candidates as a psudo significant header. This race will differentiate
the ballots for GEMS. This race can be the "Official Ballot" header,
or something more inert like a seperator with actual significant headers
in turn attached to it. What
exactly is the difference between the absentee and polling header in Gwinnett
anyway? If it is something simple like displaying "Official"
instead of "Absentee", we might be able to handle this with an
@vgroup macro in the same spirit as the @precinct macro, without a major GEMS
upgrade. Ken |