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RE: Absentees in polls without Absentee Card



From: owner-rcr@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-rcr@dieboldes.com]On Behalf Of Ken Clark
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 1999 3:30 PM

RCR posted on behalf of Berry Herron.
 
Minnesota would like to count absentee ballots in the polls throughout the day, as opposed to saving them up until polls close, feeding an absentee ender card, and then feeding them. 
 
This is now complete.  Support is in GEMS 1.16.1 and the upcoming AV PC1.95e.
 
It appears Minnesota has had a change of heart since Feb 99 and will instead continue to use the absentee headers cards, but work was started on this feature before that decision was made.  Regardless, it would be in everyone's best interest to test this now and find any problems.  This will prevent the need for a another ROM swap/release in the future should MN change their minds or some another account need it.
 
To use this feature you need to check the "Auto Absentee" checkbox in the GEMS setup AccuVote tally settings.  This flag tells the 1.95e firmware to determine the counter group based on the card id if it can.
 
Next, you need to set up the database to guarantee that the card ids are unique to a counter group.  Create a "polling" and "absentee" voter group 2.  Create two new races with no candidates and low id numbers.  Attach the races to the two voter groups.  These races are used as psudo-headers on the artwork, and will force a different card id.  There is a new checkbox in the race editor "Don't Count".  Check that box to exclude the race from the AccuVote tape and election night reports.  This technique can also be used to solve the Gwinnett County case where users want seperate headers on the absentee cards, but have identical races.
 
The AccuVote will notice that the card id is unique to a counter group, and automatically put the counters in the right slot, without the need for the absentee header card.
 
Ken