Management of Election Results
Preparation for Election Results Entry and Updates:
- Decide how many people you will need to dedicate to processing elections. You might only need yourself–especially for smaller elections like specials or even primary elections. If you have an intern, ask them to help you out too. Sometimes, you might need the Elections Director to assist.
- For big General Elections, especially those in even-numbered years, you will need to mobilize the entire staff to help you out. Assign 2-3 staff members to a set of states, and with the Elections Director organize a training for the staff so they are prepared to process elections the day following the election.
- Here is an example from 2022
- Prioritize election results in collaboration with your supervisor. Typically, federal and gubernatorial offices are completed and released live first, followed by the remainder of the state-level elections. Within an office, we will generally prioritize the population of the state.
- Finalize tracking sheets (on election days with multiple primaries or general election day, processing election results can get a little hectic so a more detailed tracking sheet is ideal--otherwise "Status of the States" will be sufficient).
- Identify "challenging" states that should be reserved for the most experienced staff or whose complications will need to be clearly communicated to staff and interns.
- Typically, this will include: states with the possibility of runoffs, those states with incomplete election results available, states with more than one seat per district or variable seats per district, special elections, judicial elections without seats, retention/recall elections, swing states in Presidential elections.
Role During Election Results Entry and Updates (can be delegated to staff members you trust with experience in election results)
- Find and Prepare Election Results for circulation first thing so you can pick the easiest results, identify challenging states, and route them to the right person
- Assign work based on the priorities identified (see above), keep everything organized, and update tracking sheets as necessary
- Perform entry and checks on those states+offices deemed "challenging" (see above)
- Perform all advancing and releasing of election results
- Perform all corrections needed after the election results have been advanced for an election
- Perform incumbent checks as time allows
