Voters in Ontario are in one of five Voter Groups and have
the option of having their taxes go to the appropriate school
board
or they own property in the jurisdiction but do not
get to vote for the school board (cottage country for example), just mayor
and council. They are:
English Public, English
Separate French Public, French Separate and Non-Resident Property Owner
(non-partisan)
Each is set up in the Voter Group Editor, tracking and
separate ballots.
Works fine until there are acclamations and
the jurisdiction expects voter turnout from each of the five
categories.
More complications when two councillors are
acclaimed.
Assuming the ridiculous to make the point - Wards 7 and 8
have the ward councillors acclaimed and the four school trustees in the two
wards are also acclaimed. A possible of ten ballots has been reduced
to one with only the mayor's race. The jurisdiction wants to know the
turnout for the ten groups.
The work around is to create the race with
the acclaimed candidate and move it to the back of the
ballot. (In Canadian municipal elections, only Vancouver
uses the back of the ballot.) Then have the ballots printed
with the back blank.
This creates the ten ballots, the proper headers
identifying the ballot are positioned and the acclaimed races/candidates
appear in the Election reports. Someone may smudge the back of
the ballot where the programmed voting position is and inadvertently create
a vote. This could be changed with manual entry in the unlikely
event it should happen.
I pointed out to
Greg that it is possible to place races on ballots with no candidates
and no horizontal and vertical lines, linked to the appropriate voter
group. In this manner it would be possible to force voter-group
specific ballots in the case of acclamations. Reporting sets are
defined for purposes of reporting results for non-dummy races.
Greg is testing this now.
Downloading and
uploading of test ballots should confirm that software/firmware will
accept races with no candidates.
It would of course be nice if
GEMS would allow forced voter-group splitting of ballots, even without
voter group-linked races defined. Turnout for each of the 10 voter
groups for the <N.P.> affiliated Mayoral race would be addressed
by 2.0 firmware (according to Ken).
Problem: The headers change
when placed on the ballot. The non-partisan ballots 1, 6, 11, 16, 21,
etc. are all headered Non-Resident Property Owner but switch to French
Separate, an acclaimed race. English Public, English Separate and
French Public headers work the way they should. I have the French
Separate header tied to it's race ID (260) and the French Public to
ID250.
Is the problem that there is only one candidate?
or the header is on the front of the ballot and race has been
moved to the back? I can not produce a set of ballots with the correct
headers.
Headers are placed on all
card faces common to the plate. By defining voter group-linked
dummy races to the card fronts unique plates will be created for each
card.
Nel