California March Closed (???) (was RE: California Open Primary Option (2002) in Gems for AVTS)

["Ken Clark" <ken@gesn.com>]

[apologies if you get this twice -- lucy ran out of disk space briefly this morning]

 

From: owner-support@gesn.com [mailto:owner-support@gesn.com]On Behalf Of Steve Knecht
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 11:04 PM

Ken,

Are you aware of the California March Closed primary "decline to state" legislation.  

 

No, this is news to me.  Thanks for the heads-up.  I think I might now know why Hintz was asking about Akaska filter sets for AVTS. 

 

I think we better be very carefull here with topics here.  The  previous subject was "California Open Primary Option (2002)".  You are saying "California March Closed Primary".  I assume these are different topics?

This means that in the March 2002 state primary, a voter can "declare" their party at the poll if they are a "non-partisan", and therefore vote a "party" ballot.  For example, if they are not registered for Democratic party, but they are a "decline to state" voter, they can show up at the polling place, declare they want to vote a democratic ballot, and they will be given one of two democratic ballots, in this case the one without the democratic central committee race.  (A normal registered democrat will get a democrat ballot with the central committee race on it).  

 

Just to make sure we are speaking same language here, central committee races are the same as precinct comittee races, right?  One race per precinct?

Depending on how other parties decide to allow the "decline to state" or nonpartisan voters to select a party ballot, we could theoretically have up to 15 ballot types in a precinct in March.  This is FYI, and presently only the democrats have instituted this, giving us minimally 9 ballot styles per precinct in the March election.   

 

Okay, make sure you have whomever is running this show set up a test database so you know well in advance that GEMS is going to do what you want.  Don, I ask again, who is that person.  It sounds like it can be done with a vgroup1 set up for the parties, and a vgroup2 set up for "declared" and "declined to state", but this person needs to hit the keys and find out.

If several more parties go along with the democrats, we could exceed the Spyrus capability.  (Deborah - did I get this right?) 

 

It would exceed the capability of one Spyrus, yes.

 

Ken

 

 

[and then there was a follow up]

From: Ken Clark [mailto:ken@gesn.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 9:59 AM

 

Okay, make sure you have whomever is running this show set up a test database so you know well in advance that GEMS is going to do what you want.  Don, I ask again, who is that person.  It sounds like it can be done with a vgroup1 set up for the parties, and a vgroup2 set up for "declared" and "declined to state", but this person needs to hit the keys and find out. 

 

Hmmm, crap.   I can save them the trouble.  It isn't going to work:  the AVTS doesn't currently know about vgroup2, only vgroup1 (aka party).  This will need to be addressed by 2002.

 

Ken