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Bad news, everyone. Georgia law says that
absentee ballots have to have a different "Official Ballot" header
from polling ballots; in effect, a different card needs to be generated for
polling and absentee voters even though the races are the same and
unrotated. So this fix of the Voter Group selection in the Header Options
screen (as well as the fix of the bug in the generation of the separate ballots
by associating each header with a different voter group - see Ken's Bugtrack
e-mail entitled "Voter Group Header assignment
for generation of separate ballots" dated Oct. 7) needs to be
a part of whatever GEMS release is certified for use in Georgia. Georgia
will certify whatever is certified by Nichols. They are also one of those
states whose State Board of Elections is a stickler for using the
"certified release" and nothing else (rather like Florida although not
quite as fascistic about it). Gwinnett County was here for training last
week and I didn't even show them how to upgrade off the FTP site. If this
fix will be in "the next GEMS release", then "the next GEMS
release" should be the one going to Nichols for certification. Sorry
to have to drop this one, but them's the facts. If anyone has a better
idea how to get around this certification issue (not at all unlikely), speak
up. Gwinnett has been trained on GEMS even though it's not yet certified
based upon the premise that it will be certified by the time they
implement. Gwinnett expects to begin absentee voting for their
Presidential Preference Primary on January 20. Most of the rest of
Georgia's counties probably don't care whether they're using a certified release
or not (Chatham County doesn't even generate separate ballots for polling and
absentee in disregard or ignorance of that provision in the law), but Gwinnett's
Supervisor of Elections, Norma Lyons, used to work for the State Board of
Elections and knows the law very well and expects to follow it. For what
it's worth...
Tyler
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