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You need to set up some parts of Elector prior to the election.

If this is your first election with Elector, it may come pre-installed with some initial data, including party and riding data for the federal or provincial election, as well as dissolution data and previous election data for seat/vote gain context.

You need to confirm the election date and configure an automatic data feed for elections data if desired.

An Election Has Been Called - What Now?

Before you begin adding ridings and candidates into the Elector system you MUST confirm that the system is configured for the correct election date. All data entered into the system is assigned this date for data grouping purposes. This date is also required when connecting to and using any incoming election data feed parser agent, such as the Consortium Parser.

Set Your Election Date

1. In the System Tools section click on the System Configuration link
2. Click on the SET ELECTION DATE tab
3. Under Start New Election Data Date
   1. enter in the upcoming election date
   2. press the Start Election Date
   3. Press the refresh button below that
4. Now select this date from the Choose Existing Date section
5. Give this election date a memorable name (eg:  “2014 Provincial Election” or “2012 By-election”)
   1. Since elector installs are separate for each province, you do not need to state the province in the name

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Add A "Seats At Dissolution" Date

Four years is a long time for a politician. Some of them can’t cut it, unable to help the public as they promised in their long winded campaign speeches. For the most part, seats will be vacated from election to election, leaving a discrepancy in the number of seats belonging to a party from formation of parliament to the day of disbanding  just before the next election. This will be a fairly simple election data set. You will CLONE the parties from the last election to this date and then make updates to vacated seat counts in the Update Party Standings. You'll also want to clone ridings to allow you to generate regional party seat change values. Now your talent can choose to compare current election with last election, or with seats at dissolution. The seats at dissolution data points will come into play when current election data starts to come in - it will allow you to accurately compare how the province or country is changing.

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This example shows two dates for election days and two dates for seats at dissolution.

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Details:

1. Add another New Election Date but make the date the date of dissolution if know or simply set it to 1 DAY BEFORE the election date you just entered (eg: if the election was APRIL 14^th, 2014, add a new election date of APRIL 13^th, 2014)
   1. This date serves as an extra data point to add in Seats At Dissolution data. This allows you to view both the seats from the previous election 4 years ago BUT also view changes in seats due to politicians retiring, or withdrawing from the position due to scandals that forced them to flee to Mexico.
2. Clone the parties and ridings from the last election to the dissolution date. Start by ensuring the elector is set to the dissolution date you added above as the active date. Choose the Clone Data tab from the System Configuration and then select the parties and riding check-boxes and click on Clone Election Date Now.
3. You will need to edit each riding in the dissolution date and assign an Elected Party which will then be compared to the current election leading/elected party in the same region to calculate regional seat changes.

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Saving Riding and Candidate Insight From Previous Election

Once you have parties, ridings and candidates added to the current election you can use the SYNCH tool to bring riding insight forwards for matching ridings, and candidate insight forwards for candidates who run in subsequent elections.

1. Ensure you are on the Current Election Day before proceeding by using the Set Election Date tab.
2. In the System Configuration module now click on the Synch Data tab.
3. Choose the previous election date (not the dissolution day you just added in the previous step)
4. The Synch module will show the previous election, the current election and the synch state of both data sets.
   1. If you have already made changes to candidate and riding insight, the synch module will NOT overwrite your work.

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The above user is preparing to synch the previous election insight with the current election data set. Note that ridings and candidates must be defined in the target set for the insight to be copied over. This is typically done with an automated data feed or by cloning the parties and ridings when manually entering your data. Click on the + button to examine the details of the source and target insight. The colours indicate the synch status.

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More on Election Data Cloning and Synching

Each election date keeps its own pool of data separate from election to election.

This means that if Paul Brown ran in 2011 and also in 2014 he will have two election records that keep the votes he got from each election.

This lets you compare how a candidate did in their second time attempting to get a seat.

Automate Data Input

An automated data feed is a smart choice for election night instead of having a human copying and pasting election data manually.

Automated data parser agents read data from a content provider, such as Canada Newswire, and feed it directly into Elector for your broadcast output. A small application, known as an agent, runs on your data server that reads from the content provider. The agent running locally on your database server checks for new data at intervals and brings the latest content in for broadcast, leaving you to manage less tedious aspects of your station.

Contact Bannister Lake to get your instance of Elector configured for an automated data feed for your election broadcast.

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