PCT Scheduling
Keeping an organized, comprehensive, and flexible schedule for PCT administration is an absolute necessity in major election years. Scheduling should be informed by Elections Monitoring research on when the Secretary of States plans to release the official candidate list. Next, Scheduling needs to take into consideration how long it will take Profiles to complete contact information research. Finally, scheduling needs to consider the resources available for PCT administration (how many hands you will have for the initial email and subsequent contacts). There are a few keys tools PCT admin should use to stay organized and out in front of PCT administration deadlines:
Candidate Communications Timeline
The Candidate Communications timeline plans out the order, method (post, email, phone), recipients (Presidential, Congressional, State Level), and Sender (signature) of each candidate communication. This should be approved, along with the communication drafts themselves, but the National Director & President before moving forward with PCT scheduling.
Elections Department Master Calendar
The Elections Department Master Calendar is the most important document for PCT planning. If done correctly, it should incorporate Elections Monitoring info (expected date of candidate list release for each state), Profiles info (progress on contact info research), and all candidate communication dates. This document should be created long before candidate lists start coming out, and updated continuously as new information becomes available. States should be grouped by the expected date of candidate list release, and also factor in election date. PCT Administration periods need to be between 4-6 weeks, and there should be 1.5 - 2 between the PCT Due Date and election. With that in mind, states will need to be shuffled around into groups that make the most sense. Additionally, Email Dates, Due Dates, and everything in between, will likely undergo small changes throughout the process.
The dates on the PCT Master Calendar should be added to the PCT - Administration Google Calendar, and the calendar needs to be updated when things change
NPAT Groups
The NPAT groups sheet should be created at the time of the Master Calendar, and it should mirror any changes made to the calendar. When a group is locked in (meaning there is a high degree of confidence that nothing will change), the Group's information should be added into its own excel sheet and imported into Mantis (example: http://mantis.votesmart.org/view.php?id=8983). The excel sheet should contain the columns; Group, State, Office, Electionstage, PCT Mail date, PCT due date, PCT release date. As soon as an NPAT group is imported into the database by IT, running a mail merge on those candidates is made possible. Including the dates with each NPAT Group ensures that candidates are given the correct NPAT status during testing, and once the deadline is reached. More details on updating these status' is found on the page PCT Processing and Results.
