Elections. User Guide. Version Instructions for Using the NewsTicker Elections Module

Transcription

1 Elections User Guide Instructions for Using the NewsTicker Elections Module Version 2.5.0

2 Elections User Guide Instructions for Using the NewsTicker Elections Module Version Last Revised: June, Newsroom Solutions, LLC. All rights reserved. All brands, product names, company names, trademarks, and service marks used herein are the property of their respective owners. This document is for the use of licensed users only. Any unauthorized copying, distribution, or disclosure of information is a violation of copyright law and of the terms agreed to in the NewsTicker License Agreement. While every effort has been made to ensure technical accuracy, information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Newsroom Solutions, LLC. Newsroom Solutions, LLC Tel: (336) support@newsroomsolutions.com

3 Table of Contents 3 1: Introduction... 5 Overview...5 Features...6 Installation...7 Support...9 2: Main Settings General Configurations...11 Edit Parties...18 Edit Jurisdictions...19 Edit Precincts : Race Setup Removing Old Races...26 Adding New Local Races...26 Adding Automatically Updated Races...31 Creating Race Display Groups...34 Auditing All Races...35 Converting Primary Races to General Races : Election Night Tasks Entering Vote Totals...40 Editing Winner/Runoff Flags...42 Viewing Reports...44 Displaying Fullscreens...46 Displaying a Ticker...47 Making Last-Minute Changes : Configuring tprompt Overview...49 Profile Basics...50 Profile Formatting...50 Election Night Use : Parsing Web Results Overview...55 Creating Parsers (Macros)...56 Using NewsTicker imacros Agent...59 Best Practices...66 Advanced Concepts...68 Appendix A: Checklist for a Successful Election At Least 60 Days Prior...71

4 4 30 Days Prior Days Prior Day Prior Election Day Appendix B: Website Export...76 Settings Sample Template Appendix C: Sample How To for Data Entry Personnel...79

5 5 1 Introduction A description of the Elections module and an overview on its installation. Overview Pulling off a successful election night requires advanced planning in many areas. Determining where to place satellite and live trucks, assigning reporters to follow various candidates campaigns and developing the election night graphical look can all take months of planning. We ve taken that into consideration when developing NewsTicker s Election module by making it so easy to use you can prepare this end of your coverage in just days or hours, not weeks or months allowing you to update and display results on election night as quickly as possible. Results are updated instantly and displayed in full-screen and lower-fifth displays using Newsroom Solutions Freedom platform as well as other popular character generators. With NewsTicker s familiar interface, your staff won t need extensive training. The software is optimized for ease of use and is built using the same conventions as all other NewsTicker modules. Best of all, since it is completely integrated and not just another stand-alone application, you can display election results alongside any other NewsTicker data.

6 6 Features > Capable of handling thousands of races > Automatic data capture and race setup from wire services such as the Regional News Service (RNS) and the Associated Press (AP) > Optional add-on for scraping state and local websites > Unlimited manual data entry points including off-site data entry without requiring any proprietary client software > Ability to take-in results from multiple jurisdictions for the same race, automatically summing them for display > Producer summary displays include graphs for at-a-glance analysis and can include customized groupings of races > Automatic ranking of candidates in either descending vote order, alphabetical, or fixed order on a race-by-race basis > Complex and multiple on-air looks can be used through NewsTicker s powerful customizable LOGIC files and drive most popular CGs > Ticker display data is updated as races come in without having to stop and restart the on-air display > Advanced tprompt studio display software allows on-air talent to review extended race information of the current and next race shown on the CG in a customizable format > Web export includes automatically generated 3D bar graphs > Unlimited race grouping allows for optimum display and inquiry > Ability to perform one-time configuration of jurisdictions and common races for easy setup of local races in future elections > Optional automatic winner flagging indicates the winner once all precincts have reported, taking into account runoffs > Results can be entered using exact number of precincts reporting or just the percentage of precincts reporting on a race-by-race basis > Elections module is completely integrated with the entire NewsTicker product suite allowing stations to display election data along with any other NewsTicker data

7 7 > Familiar NewsTicker operator interface means your staff will be able to use it after 30 minutes of training Installation Election Module NewsTicker Support will install the Elections module onto your system. Once installed, it will appear just like any other module in NewsTicker s main menu. This module will be used by your producers to setup races, enter and view results on election night, and trigger full-screens. If you will have people remotely updating local races on election night, then you will want to consider a method of access. LAN PPP and VPN connections are two obvious ways of accessing NewsTicker remotely. tprompt Talent Prompter Our tprompt talent prompting software allows your anchors to see additional information about the race currently displaying on the fullscreen CG. This is useful for unscripted continuous coverage. tprompt is also capable of prompting the next race to be displayed so that the other anchor can seamlessly begin speaking in the second or two it takes to bring the next race up. tprompt runs on any PC running Windows 2000, NT, or XP that is capable of displaying an Internet website. The NewsTicker server will send data to tprompt over your LAN (TCP ports 2000 and 2001), so it must be networked and capable of being accessed by your server. Two versions of tprompt can run simultaneously on one PC in order to provide dual VGA output (i.e. prompting for the current race on monitor 1 and prompting for the next race on monitor 2). Alternatively, you can use two different PCs or just the laptop on the anchor desk. Up to six different instances of tprompt can be running, each with their own configuration. When identifying which PCs at the station to use, keep in mind the size of the VGA monitor and the distance it will be from the anchor. The application will run full-screen and you can use adjust the fonts, colors, size, and layout for optimal prompting. The application is provided to you for self installation, a process that takes approximately 30 seconds. Wire/FTP Capture If you will be capturing stories from a wire service for automatic updating of races, you will want to make sure the NewsTicker server gets a feed.

8 8 Associated Press Using an available serial port on the back of the server, connect the AP wire. To maintain story delivery to your newsroom computer system, you should Y your existing AP wire. This configuration should be tested well in advance to ensure your cabling is correct and in time for AP s election test period. If you do not have an available serial port, you may need to disconnect an attached device on election night, install a serial port card, or use serial over Ethernet. If you subscribe to the AP High-Speed Election Wire, you can plug both wires into the NewsTicker server to provide redundancy in the event the high-speed wire fails. NewsTicker will only ingest the highest results. The AP also offers an FTP service from which results can be pulled. To configure this for one or more states, send the authentication information provided by the AP to NewsTicker Support. Regional News Service If you subscribe to RNS, you do not need to do anything special with hardware to capture election results. Newsroom Solutions support will set this up for you. Web Capture (Scraping) If you have purchased the optional web parser add-on, then follow the instructions in Chapter 6, Parsing Web Results, later in this guide. Character Generator Interface While NewsTicker is already configured for the device you use for lowerfifths, the Elections module can also power your full-screen CG. If the device receives information via TCP/IP, such as the FreedomHD, then there is no special hardware requirement. However, if your CG will need a serial connection, you must run a wire between your CG and the NewsTicker server. If you do not have an available serial port on the server, you may need to disconnect an attached device on election night, install a serial port card, or use serial over Ethernet. Website Export As part of the Elections module, a template is included for exporting results to your website including automatically generated 3D bar graphs. If you would like further customization, please contact support. To perform the export, you will need to provide an FTP account to your public web server for use on election night. This link should be tested well in advance of the night you intend to use it.

9 9 Support As with all of NewsTicker, support is available by ing or by calling (336) After hours emergency support is available by following the voice prompts. After hours support on election night does not include work on displays that weren t previously tested and working. If work of this nature is required, charges will be assessed including rush charges.

10 10 2 Main Settings Instructions for configuring the Elections module and customizing it for use. The Elections module is designed to take a little longer to initially configure so that subsequent elections are quick to setup. Most of the options in this section are one-time settings that do not need to be readjusted each election. Access to the Elections module is through NewsTicker s main menu, accessible via Internet Explorer. All settings are available by clicking the Configure button from within the Elections module. The following submenus appear which are in the order they should be configured: General Configurations Allows you to adjust global settings that affect all races, such as the number of lines available for race names and winner flagging. Edit Parties Allows you to setup the names and abbreviations of each party you will be associating with candidates. Edit Jurisdictions Provides an interface for entering default information about each jurisdiction (state, county, parish, township, etc.) and associated races for making it quicker to enter subsequent races each election. Edit Precincts Allows you to create individual precincts (if doing precinctby-precinct data entry) or virtual precincts (if ingesting results by county or an election board). Edit Races Add or modify races and candidates for the current election.

11 11 Edit Wire Capture Setup utility to ingest results in real-time from national wires like the Regional News Service (RNS) and the Associated Press (AP). Edit Display Groups Allows you to define custom groups of races in a defined order for viewing reports or sending data to your ticker or fullscreens. Audit Race Setup Reviews all races currently configured to find potential trouble spots, such as races with no candidates or anchor prompt information. Autocreate General Election Utility for moving race configuration from a completed primary election to a general election. General Configurations The General Configurations screen allows you to adjust global settings that affect all races. Maximum Number of Seats The best way to show you how this setting works is by example. For any U.S. Senate race, the maximum number of seats is one. In other words only one person will be elected a U.S. Senator. For many city council and school board races, you may have a pool of candidates vying for a fixed number of spots on the council or board. A race for city council may have ten candidates for three open seats. When all the votes are tallied for our city council race, the top three vote getters will fill the three open seats. The number of seats is important when it comes to applying winner flags. The default setting here is ten, which means when you go to setup a race, the dropdown box will let you choose between one and ten for that particular race. For most elections, it probably doesn t need to be changed. Maximum Race Name Fields Race name fields are text boxes that contain the name of the race, simply enough. To determine the maximum number of race name fields you ll need, imagine how the race may look on air. The fullscreens in your graphics package may call for one line that contains the county name and a second line that contains the actual race name. Then, you may wish to use an abbreviated form of the race name for a lower-fifth display. Those would go in three different fields. Keep in mind the race name fields are different than candidate name fields. The name of the race is, well, the name of the race as in Jones County Commissioner or President of the United States.

12 12 In the following full-screen sample, two race names are used with BLAIR COUNTY in race name 1 and City Commissioner District 3 in race name 2: Another uses of race name fields is to include the term of the office, as in:

13 13 In the above example, you may end up using all four fields if you decide that you want to use an abbreviated form for your crawl. But, if you wanted your crawl to display fields one and two, as in Westchester Co.: County Executive, that can be done automatically in NewsTicker s LOGIC files without having to re-key it that way in a separate field. To prevent a producer from entering data into a line that isn t configured to display, we suggest you change the number of available race names to match your graphics package and intended use. Prompt Line Fields The prompt line fields are displayed to your in-studio talent by Newsroom Solutions tprompt program. tprompt runs on a PC in the studio and displays extra information not available to the anchors from the on-air display. When a fullscreen is sent to the CG, the prompt line information is shown on tprompt, along with other race information. Typically, it is used to enter color commentary or facts about the race so that your talent has material to use during unscripted continuous coverage. Here is an example. It s primary night and you are showing the Democrats vying for the state senate race as a full-screen (see below). Let s also assume that the Republican candidate for the same district, Randy Goodwin, is unopposed. In a primary with a lot of races, an anchor would be hard pressed to remember who the winner from the Democratic side is going to face. So, in the prompt lines for the Democratic race, you could enter The winner of this race will face Republican Randy Goodwin in November. Since you are provided with up to two prompt fields, you could put a second fact in the other, such as: Wes Scott has been a state senator for 12 years. Note that while 65,536 characters will fit into each prompt field, the amount of text that will fit on the tprompt display depends on the font face and size you use when configuring it. It is best to run through all races in advance to make sure all of the prompt data will appear correctly. Also note that you might choose to use the first prompt line to enter abbreviated information for your anchors, and the second prompt line to send formatted information about the race to your website. Or, you may

14 14 decide to use only one or none which is the reason the option is here to begin with. There is a secondary option to specify which prompt line(s) will be displayed when you select the race in the report screen. This should be set for whichever lines you plan on sending to the tprompt application. So, if you are sending prompt line 1 to tprompt (the anchor), and prompt line 2 to your website, you would limit the fields shown in the report screen to just field 1. Default Runoff Percentage When setting up individual races for an election, you can denote if a race is eligible for a runoff. If it is, NewsTicker will use this number as the default percentage in the formula used to determine the minimum number of votes a candidate must receive to win a race. It can be overridden within the race itself and by jurisdictional settings. The formula used is: ((All Votes Num. of Seats) x %) + 1 This setting only comes into use when you have NewsTicker automatically choose the winner of the race to prevent the system from flagging somebody a winner when a runoff is required. Race Name Display First, it is important to note this setting does not affect your on-air display. It is used for displaying race data within the NewsTicker operator interface. Let s go back to an earlier example. If NewsTicker were to just display race line 1 in menu options, you would have a bunch of races called WESTCHESTER CO. and no indication of which race this is in the county. If it used race name 2, you would just have County Executive, but no indication of which county. So that race names make sense in your reports and in menus, you would choose to use Race Name 1 and 2 if this were your setup. Alternatively, if you are using a separate race name field for your ticker display, you could just use that if it contains all of the necessary information in one field.

15 15 Default Fullscreen LOGIC File The power of NewsTicker Elections is the many options you have for displaying data. NewsTicker tells the CG how to order information on the screen and which graphical elements to use through the use of LOGIC files. Then, you can associate a particular race with a graphical presentation to match your graphics package. For example, you may have a LOGIC file named FS_No_PICS.fmt that displays a race without candidate pictures. Similarly, the LOGIC file FS_PICS.fmt could display a race with their pictures. Finally, you could have FS_Yes_No.fmt which provides a different layout for ballot proposals where Yes and No are the only two candidates. As you set-up each race, you either associate a LOGIC file to that race, or specify the race to use the default LOGIC file. If you opt for the default, it will use whatever you specify here for the graphical look. Fullscreen CG The NewsTicker Elections module can be used to drive both lower-fifth and fullscreen displays. This allows data to be entered in one location and shown in multiple places. You setup the CG you wish to display fullscreens on in NewsTicker s Broadcast module, just as you did for your current lower-fifths CG. Once it is configured, you specify the unit here. tprompt: Anchor Prompting The tprompt software, described earlier, is used to provide extra information to your anchors. Enter the IP addresses of the computers on which you installed the tprompt software. You must also specify a port. You can run two versions of tprompt on one PC. The first version will use port 2000 and the second version will use port Be sure to remove outdated IPs from this configuration as incorrect or unusable addresses may slow the display of your fullscreens or updating of valid tprompt installations. You may need to contact your IT department for help with these settings. Default Ticker Order When showing elections results in your ticker display via NewsTicker s Broadcast module, you can modify the order races will appear by changing this option. There are a couple of standard options in the first dropdown box. You are also able to create your own custom order by creating a display group (described later).

16 16 Additionally, you can choose to skip races that have no results an option that allows you to jump to those with results early on election night and skip those where you weren t able to get data later in the night. Default Web Export Order This option works similar to the previous option except it applies to the web export. Based on the type of customization you are doing, your web export may not respect this setting. You may confirm with NewsTicker Support whether this applies to your configuration. Default Yes/No Values Ballot proposals, millage hikes, and other questions that go before voters are decided by voting Yes or No. To speed data entry when creating new Yes/No races in NewsTicker, you can set a default look here. First choose whether you want Yes or No as the first candidate in the display. This is useful if you decide that you always want Yes and No in the same place on the screen and aren t ordering by vote totals. Then you can change how the words appear on-air for example, if your display just presents last names and not first names, you would need for it to be in the last name field instead. Additionally, you could change Yes and No to Pass and Fail or For and Against if it better fits the lexicon of elections in your area. Finally, if you are using a graphic to represent Yes and No, you can enter the appropriate identifier in the Pic ID fields for each. Allow Precinct Total Updates Typically, you configure the total number of precincts (denominator) for each race during setup. Then, on the data entry screen, the user is asked to enter the number of precincts reporting (the numerator). If this is set to Yes, then the user will be able to edit both the number of precincts currently reporting as well as the total precincts in the race from the race entry screen. If set to No, they will only be able to enter the number of precincts reporting. Wire Capture NewsTicker can be configured to monitor third-party sources, such as a wire service, to automatically update races. Toggling this option enables or disables automatic updating from this configured source. If the wire service is experiencing problems and sending erroneous data, this allows you to easily prevent further updates from this source. Adjust Use declared winners/runoffs to allow the wire service to declare winners or mark candidates as being in a runoff. Later in the documentation, you will see that you can also manually flag a winner.

17 17 By default, NewsTicker will process any summary races fed by the wire service (designated by -Sum in the slug). If you would also like to process races broken down by county (-Cnty), then set Process -Cnty Stories to Yes. Once a county breakdown story clears, you ll see each county within the race appear as a separate story within wire capture, allowing you to match it up to a virtual precinct within a race. In additional, a Totals entry will appear. If you wish to just use this value from a county breakdown story, but not the individual counties, then set the value to Yes, but Totals only. Winner/Runoff Flagging When enabled, NewsTicker will automatically assign a winner, or designate candidates in a runoff election when a race reaches 100% of precincts reporting. If used on air, these flags are a checkmark or some other graphic representation that a candidate has won the race, or is proceeding to a runoff election. The determination of who gets flagged is based on vote totals, the number of seats for that particular race, and if the top candidate has reached the minimum number of votes required to win the race if a runoff is possible. If you are using a third-party source to automatically update race totals, such as a wire service, they may flag a winner prior to 100% reporting. You will see later in this document that you can also manually flag a winner before 100% of precincts are reporting, such as when you project a winner. Sample Race Data Once you have entered all of the races you will be following on election night, you will use this option to start your display testing, allowing you to TEST, TEST and TEST again. This option automatically fills all of your races with random results. Only viewing your races with zero votes may not reveal problems with word wrapping, spacing, or vote total fields that are too short to display all of the numbers. When entering random results, NewsTicker will also use random numbers of precincts reporting, being sure to make some of the races reporting 100%, allowing you to test the display of winner flags. You can set the vote count range NewsTicker uses when randomly filling races by inputting values into the Minimum Votes and Maximum Votes fields. By using a range on the higher end of the expected results, you can ensure your displays have fields wide enough to accommodate the vote count. This gives you a more realistic test.

18 18 You will also return here to zero-out all of the races once you are finished testing. Choosing this option will return to zero precincts reporting and no votes for any candidate. Because this will overwrite any results currently assigned to races, you are asked a couple of times to verify the action, which should give you some time to think about what you are doing. Warning This cannot be undone! Delete All Races When the election is over and you are done with the data, you can remove all of the races by choosing this option. Naturally, this would be disastrous to do the day before the election, so you are asked many times if you really think it is a good idea. Note that if you are moving from a primary election to a general election, you may wish to use the Autocreate General Election feature described in the next chapter instead. Warning See warning in previous section! Edit Parties The Edit Parties screen allows you to setup the parties affiliated with candidates for a consistent on-air display. This information remains in the system for each election. Add New Party From the Configure menu, click-on Edit Parties. You will note that the system comes with Democrat, Republican and Independent pre-entered. There are two parts to each party entry. You decide what the long party name should be and the abbreviation. You may decide to use the abbreviation for your ticker but display the full name for your full-screens or web site. Note that if you are adding races automatically from the wire capture screen, the party abbreviation or one of the display names must match the wire source for NewsTicker to automatically create the association. Otherwise, you will have to manually do this. Popular abbreviations include GOP (Republican), Dem (Democrat), Ind (Independent), Grn (Green), Lib (Libertarian), RP (Reform Party), CST (Constitution), Oth (Other) To add a new party name just click-on the Add New Party button and enter an abbreviation and at least one longer-form party name in Display 1. You only need to enter information into Display 2 if you plan on using multiple looks that necessitate it.

19 19 Once configured, this information is available as a dropdown box when setting up individual candidates. Edit Jurisdictions A jurisdiction is simply a vote-gathering region, such as State Offices or Jones County. Once you define a jurisdiction, you can pre-populate information that is always true about races within that jurisdiction. For example, in State Offices you could setup the basics of a race for governor, including number of seats, LOGIC file to use, the total number of precincts, the name of the race, the formula used during a runoff, and the manner in which you would like to display the candidates. Once you do this, this template of a governor s race becomes available when you actually have a race for governor. You would simply choose this race type and all of that information will be pre-populated into a race. All you would have left to do is enter the candidates and any anchor prompt information. Clearly this involves some up-front work, but the time saved in every subsequent election is well worth it. Another benefit of setting up race templates is consistency. Multiple people setting up races are less prone to make mistakes when most of the fields are already entered for them. Setting up jurisdiction races is not required. It is meant as a time-saving feature for you. Even if you don t setup template races, you may still wish to establish individual jurisdictions so that you can group the actual races and, for example, show all races from one county at the push of a button. Much of how you define a jurisdiction and organize it is up to you and your intended use of displaying results on election night. Add New Jurisdiction Begin the process by clicking on Add New Jurisdiction. Type the name of the jurisdiction as you would want it to appear in dropdown boxes. You can have two names for this entry if you would like a variation on the name in your on-air displays. If you only want to use one, make sure you place it in the Display 1 box and click Save. After saving the entry you will be presented with the Edit Jurisdiction screen. This screen will list all the race types currently associated with that jurisdiction which, at this point is zero. Click Add Race Type to enter your first race type. The Edit Race Type screen asks for several pieces of information about each race. You should only fill-in the information you know or will use. Note that when you actually go to use this race type, you can modify any

20 20 of this information at that time. In other words, these options pre-fill the fields, but you can then change them once you actually create the race. Seats Choose the number of seats typically open for this race type. If you leave it blank, then the choice will be deferred to when you actually use this race type in an election. If you know the race always has one winner, then choose one here. The maximum number of allowable seats is set in the General Configurations. Fullscreen LOGIC File If you already have fullscreen LOGIC files on your system, then they will be visible in this dropdown box. This allows you to associate this race type with a graphical look. If you choose DEFAULT, then whatever is setup in General Configurations as the default format file will be used. Total Precincts This is the total number of precincts that will be voting on this race type. When entering results, NewsTicker lets you enter either the number of precincts reporting or the percentage of precincts reporting. This can be decided on race-by-race basis. If you provide the total number of precincts voting on the race, then NewsTicker will prompt you for the number of precincts reporting when entering vote totals. If you don t provide the number of precincts in advance, it will prompt you for the percentage reporting. Race Name Enter the name of the race here. As discussed earlier, how you format each line will depend on your specific display needs. The number of race name display lines available for us is editable in General Configurations. Runoff Possible? If a runoff is possible for this election, enter the percentage value that satisfies the equation below, which produces the minimum number of votes the leading candidate must receive to be declared a winner: ((All Votes Num. of Seats) x %) + 1 The system-wide default is set in General Configurations. Order Candidates Each race can have its own way of ordering candidates. For example, you may wish for all ballot proposals to always display Yes first and No second, regardless of vote total. This dropdown option allows you to make this choice. It might be useful to setup a race type called Ballot Proposal that sets the number of seats to one and the candidate order to your preference.

21 21 Creating Race Types from Existing Races While the above instructions explained how to create a new race type from scratch, it is also possible to generate one from an existing race. Within the Edit Races screen of Configure, click on a race whose information you would like to assign to a jurisdiction. Be sure you have it assigned to the desired jurisdiction and click Create Jurisdiction Race. The information in the existing race will then be created as a race type within the defined jurisdiction. Examples of Use Perhaps the best way to understand how jurisdictional race types can be used is to see a couple of examples. In the first example, we will use a race for governor. We know that there is only ever one governor so we can set the number of seats to one. In our sample, we have a LOGIC file named fullscreen-flag.fmt that we assign to the governor s race. As a self-respecting news organization, we ve done our research and know that 9,412 precincts will be voting on the governor (the total number of precincts in the entire state.) We use Governor as the first race name and the term, which is always four years, as the third race name. We know he must receive 40% of the total votes to be elected and we want the top vote-getter to be listed first on-air.

22 22 Our second example uses a non-specific school board race. In this race type, we don t know the number of seats or precincts since that is always changing. But, we can use the notion of a template to provide notes to the person adding the races. For the first race name, we tell that person to enter the school name. The second race name will stay as Board of Education. Finally, the third race name will include the number of seats and length of term. Edit Precincts If all of your results come from a wire service or in a tallied fashion by your local municipality, then you may be thinking you don t need to use this option. Certainly, if you are collecting results precinct-by-precinct, or you have races that cross various reporting agencies, such as some school board races, you would need it. Contrary to what you may be thinking, every station can benefit from using this feature, even if they are gathering results from a single county. In NewsTicker Elections, there are four ways to enter results to yield a cumulative vote total: 1 Configure an automated data source, such as a wire service, to continuously update the races. The wire service provides totaled results of all precincts reporting giving you a complete number of votes on the race.

23 23 2 Manually update the race with results provided by a government agency that has already pre-summed the race information. For example, a local county elections office typically tabulates the votes of all races within the county and can tell you the number of precincts currently reporting as well as each candidate s vote total. 3 You have no central reporting agency in your area or the one you do have is too slow to be practical. You manually collect results from each individual voting precinct. So, if there are 79 voting precincts, you receive race information from 79 localities and need to sum the results. 4 You do have a central reporting agency, but a particular race crosses jurisdictional bounds so you receive part of the race totals from one agency, other parts from a second or third agency, and need to sum them together to determine the official vote total. We ll deal with the first two scenarios in a bit. The final two scenarios require you to set up precincts within NewsTicker Elections so that you may enter results by the race s parts, with NewsTicker automatically tabulating the whole. It is important to understand the difference between scenarios three and four. In scenario three, if a race has 30 precincts reporting, you are physically configuring 30 precincts. You will need to enter individual results for that race 30 times, once for each precinct you get results from. As expected, each time you receive results, the total number of precincts reporting for the race increments by one. This is what a typical county board of elections would do. In contrast, your results come in parts in scenario four, but not by individual precincts. For example, Chicago is in Cook County. The City of Chicago tabulates all votes cast inside the City limits and the County tabulates all other votes in the County (but not anything in the City limits). So, to know the complete results of a countywide proposal, you would have to add together the results from the City of Chicago and Cook County. If you treated them as normal precincts like in scenario three, then you would show a total of only two precincts! If one entity had results while the other didn t, you would be showing 50% reporting which could be quite wrong considering Chicago has 50 precincts and Cook County has 2,400. For this reason, NewsTicker Elections allows you to treat a single logical precinct as actually being larger than just one precinct. When considering scenario four, it may be better to treat the word precinct as being more generic, meaning a partial set of results that must be combined with other sets to determine the vote total. When you set up a precinct to represent more than just one, it is referred to as a virtual precinct.

24 24 Later, when it comes time to enter results for a race assigned to a precinct (or virtual precinct, as it might be), you ll simply enter the name of the precinct into the Edit Race screen. You will then be presented each race that is assigned to that precinct, allowing you to ask the caller for a specific race, enter the information, and press Next. Using this method, your data entry personnel will never need to manually feed race numbers into the system, reducing the odds that they ll accidentally miss a race. By now, you may have guessed that assigning a virtual precinct to all of your races, including scenarios one and two, is a major benefit. Even if you assign a single virtual precinct to each race, you will gain from having all of the races grouped together at the point results come in. And, as you ll see, it also allows you to keep vital contact information for each vote reporting agency centralized within NewsTicker Elections. Add New Precincts You can either create several precincts at once (useful for precinct-byprecinct entry), or one at a time (useful for virtual precinct entry). Creating Precincts for Precinct-by-Precinct Entry To create several precincts at once, click Add Precinct Series. Enter the total number of precincts you wish to add in the Number of Precincts to Create box. You can begin at some number other than one by putting a new number in the Starting Precinct Number box. If you are entering results for more than one county, then chances are pretty great that your precinct numbers may overlap. So, NewsTicker Elections allows you to precede and/or append each precinct with some text to help differentiate it. Keep in mind that on election night, you can bring up all races assigned to a specific precinct to make it easier to enter results. If you re-use Precinct 1 from Cook County for Jones County, then you will lose the effectiveness of this association. Instead, we recommend Cook1 and Jones1. Having alphabetic characters in the precinct ID is also important when calling up the precinct so that NewsTicker knows you are asking for all races assigned to Cook County s first precinct versus the results for race number one. While these abbreviations should be meaningful, we also encourage them to be short to reduce errors (e.g. Mecklenburg County, Precinct 45: Meck45; Shiawassee County, Precinct 68-A: Shi68A). Once you ve created the series, you can click on a precinct to enter contact information for that precinct, such as your stringer or a local poll worker. Creating Precincts Individually To add a single precinct, click Add New Precinct from within Edit Precincts. Enter the name of the first county (or other entity) you wish to add. Note that whatever name you

25 25 enter here will be entered back into NewsTicker by a data entry person on election night. For that reason, it should be self-explanatory and easy to type. You could use full county names (Blair, Centre, Jefferson, Mecklenburg, etc.) or something shorter that a data entry person wouldn t struggle spelling (blai, cent, jeff, meck, etc.). If you use an abbreviation, we recommend making each the same length, as we did with four characters above. That way, you can tell the data entry person to enter the first four letters of the county name. There are additional optional fields for entering a link to a website address, as well as contact information for your stringer or the local clerk. When viewing race results from the producer screens, you can rollover the virtual precinct to reveal the contact information, or click on it to launch the website. Associate Precincts to Races The Edit Precincts section allows you to create and modify precinct names. Once you have created a series of precincts, you assign them from within the Edit Races section. Note that you can also switch between the aforementioned scenarios three and four from within Edit Race by modifying the logical number of precincts each counts for.

26 26 3 Race Setup Step-by-step instructions for setting up individual races. From the Configure screen, you can add races into the system. If you invested the time in building race types in the Edit Jurisdictions section, your work will pay off shortly. Removing Old Races If you are starting the race entry process for a new election and data from the last election is still in the system, go to General Configuration from the Configure screen and scroll to the bottom of the page. You will see the Delete All Races option. Click the underlined here. You will be presented with a confirmation box asking if you wish to remove all races currently in the system. Note that this cannot be undone. If you are positive this is the action you wish to take, click OK and navigate back to the Edit Races screen. Adding New Local Races The Edit Races section of Configure allows you to edit the setup of existing races and create new races. Click Add New Race to begin entering races.

27 27 Basic Race Information Race ID Every race has its own unique identifier when it is stored in the database. To make these easier to work with and to speed recall of the race, these are numbered sequentially. You can change this by manually entering a new number between 1 and 65,535. Note that whatever number you use, the system will automatically default to the next higher number for the next race you enter. So, if you make 100 the ID of your first race, the next race will default to 101. Some stations prefer to use race number schemes to help in grouping races. For example, races in the 100s are state-level, races in the 200s are for a specific county, etc. Seats Choose the number of seats open for this race. This is needed for flagging winners. The maximum number of allowable seats is set in the General Configurations. Fullscreen LOGIC File If you already have fullscreen LOGIC files in your system, then they will be visible in this dropdown box. This allows you to

28 28 associate this race with a graphical look. If you choose DEFAULT, then whatever is setup in the General Configurations as the default LOGIC file will be used. This option is used when sending fullscreens to the CG and not when using it the race in a ticker display. Jurisdiction If you have setup individual jurisdictions as described in Chapter 2, then you can group this race with a jurisdiction by selecting it from this dropdown box. If you have gone to the added step of creating race types within the jurisdiction, then the jurisdiction name will also appear with an arrow. If you choose that, a popup box will appear allowing you to pick one of the pre-defined race types you entered. Upon selecting the race type, the fields are automatically filled-in with the information you specified. If you are creating a new race based on a race type, this is usually your first step when adding a race. Total Precincts This is the total number of precincts that will be voting on this race type. When entering results, NewsTicker lets you enter either the number of precincts reporting or the percentage of precincts reporting. This can be decided on race-by-race basis. If you provide the total number of precincts voting on the race, then NewsTicker will prompt you for the number of precincts reporting when entering vote totals. If you don t provide the number of precincts in advance, it will prompt you for the percentage reporting. Precincts voting on a particular race can be a tricky thing, especially for smaller units of government such as township races. Votes are usually counted at the county or parish level, which includes multiple villages, cities, and townships. Some counties will provide partial results only giving you the total number of precincts reporting for the entire county. So, if the county has 90 precincts and a township has four precincts, the county may show results for the township supervisor and then have an overall number of 38 precincts reporting. This leaves you in the unenviable position of having to guess whether all four of the township precincts for that race have reported, or just a fraction. Short of educating the county on your presentation needs and having them go along with it, there isn t an easy answer to this. Race Name Enter the name of the race here. As discussed earlier, how you format each line will depend on your specific display needs. The number of race name display lines available for us is editable in General Configurations. Runoff Possible? If a runoff is possible for this election, enter the percentage value that satisfies the equation below, which produces the minimum number of votes the leading candidate must receive to be declared a winner: ((All Votes Num. of Seats) x %) + 1

29 29 The system-wide default is set in General Configurations. Anchor Prompt Lines As part of the NewsTicker Elections package, our tprompt talent prompting software allows your anchors to see additional information about the race currently displaying as a full-screen on the CG. This is useful for unscripted continuous coverage. tprompt is also capable of prompting the next race to be displayed so that the other anchor can seamlessly begin speaking in the second or two it takes to bring the next race up. Enter the information you would like to be displayed to your talent when this race appears as a full-screen, such as how money for a bond issue will be spent, a particular fact about a candidate, or other race details. Note that two individual sets of anchor prompt information can be stored and recalled. While you may only use one for prompting talent, the other could be used to display more details about the race on your website. The number of available anchor prompt input boxes is set in General Configurations. Order Candidates Each race can have its own way of ordering candidates. For example, you may wish for all ballot proposals to always display Yes first and No second, regardless of vote total. This dropdown option allows you to make this choice. Note that the vote entry screen will always use the order in which you have the candidates physically listed so that you may enter them in the same order as you will receive the results, making vote entry quicker. Adding Candidates Once the basic race information has been added, you can enter candidates. If the race is a ballot proposal or similar where Yes and No are the two options, then you can conveniently click on Add Yes/No and those will be entered as candidates using the defaults you established in General Configurations. At this point, you would be done setting up the race. If the race has people as candidates, then click Edit Candidates to add them. You will be prompted to save the race before continuing. Within the Edit Candidates section, you can enter necessary information about each candidate. After you have entered a candidate s data, click Save to add them to the list. Continue adding candidates by using the same process. When you are done, press Exit to return to the race list or Edit Race to go back to the race details. You may edit the information of an existing candidate by clicking on the field you wish to edit, reorder using the arrow next to the candidate s name, or delete the candidate by pressing the trashcan.

30 30 While you may choose to display candidates in order of vote total, the order in which they are entered here is important for one main reason: it is how they will appear when entering results. Because of this, it is best to work from sample ballots so that vote entry will be quicker. Vis This determines whether the candidate you are entering should appear (or be visible) when displaying the race on fullscreens or on the ticker. Regardless of the visibility setting, the candidate will always appear when entering vote totals. There are situations where you may want to suppress the display of a candidate, such as during a presidential election. In addition to the Republican and Democratic candidates, you usually have some minor party candidates on the ballot that will have some votes, albeit small. You could turn the visibility of those candidates off so just the Republican and Democratic candidates are displayed. This allows for a proper calculation of the percentage of vote, keeping in mind that other lesser candidates received votes, without having to display every last one of them. (It also means the wire capture process will run correctly without producing an error because of a different candidate set.) First/Last Name Obviously, these fields heavily involve the name of the candidate. If a middle initial is used, it is typically included as part of the first name. Incumb? Set the dropdown box to denote whether or not the candidate is an incumbent. Party In Chapter 2, how to setup individual parties was described. Based on your entries there, you can assign an optional party affiliation to each candidate. Pic ID For some races, you may decide to show a picture of the candidate next to his or her name. This field is used to designate where on your CG the candidate s picture is located. You will want to work with your graphic artist on this. Of course, this can be set after you have setup all races and candidates too. Assigning Precincts After configuring a race, you may optionally assign precincts if you will be entering results on a precinct-by-precinct basis or if the race crosses jurisdictional boundaries. You may also assign virtual precincts if you would like the powerful ability to enter the name of the county into the Edit Results screen, and get a complete list of all races needed from that county (versus typing each race ID individually). Click Assign Precincts. You will be presented with a screen listing all of the precincts you configured in Configure > Edit Precincts. Choose which precincts you would like to assign to the race. If a group of

31 31 precincts are named similarly, you can select them as a group by clicking the respective Check All box. Once selected, you may then change the logical number of precincts counted for each by altering the # Precs column. If every precinct that calls in counts as one precinct, then the value would be 1. If, however, you are combining multi-precinct races (such as a race that crosses jurisdictional boundaries), you can change the number of precincts it will be counted as. When you ve completed the precinct assignments, it will automatically set the race s Total Precincts to match. Adding Automatically Updated Races NewsTicker Elections supports the updating of races from third-party sources, such as wire services or a web scrape. Newsroom Solutions support will help configure your system to allow for external updates. The Elections module allows you to inspect races from a wire or the web during their testing period and automatically configure NewsTicker races directly from these tests. While you can pre-enter these races by hand as described above and simply associate the wire race with the one you manually entered, this convenience of adding a race directly from the wire saves time. Once the wire capture program is configured and receiving data, races will be automatically detected and appear for matching within the Edit Wire Capture menu from the Configure screen. This screen provides you a list of all races detected from the third party source, whether or not you have associated them with a configured race, and when the race was last fed down.

32 32 To begin, select the Wire ID of the race you wish to configure. Adding a New Race Based on a Wire Race To add a new race based on the wire race, in the Race ID field, choose Create Race From Story. Press Continue. A new race is added and an association is created between the wire race and the NewsTicker race. You may now edit the race if desired. Note Races automatically added by inspecting a third party source only contain partial information. For example, the number of seats and whether a runoff is possible (and, if so, the formula used to determine the outcome) are not detectable. You should always double check every race added using this method including party affiliations and display order. Associating a Wire Race with an Existing Race If you have configured all your races and now you just wish to associate a wire race with an existing race, you may do so by selecting the already configured NewsTicker race that you would like to update from the dropdown box. Press Continue. If the race you selected is assigned precincts, you will be prompted to associate the wire race with a precinct useful for county breakdown stories. Finally, you will see the candidates as detected from the source with the ability to match them with candidates you have entered for the race. The dropdown boxes will automatically limit you to matching only one wire candidate per candidate in your race. Once done, click Save.

33 33 Some wire races may appear multiple times. This is because wire services like the Associated Press may send one race as its own story, and re-send as part of a Top Races story containing multiple races. In this case, you will need to configure both to point to the locally entered NewsTicker race so that both story types update the race. Disassociating/Clearing Races If you made an error in associating a particular race, or wish to associate a wire race differently, click the Wire ID of the race you wish to disassociate and click Delete. The NewsTicker race will no longer be tied to the wire race allowing you to re-associate the wire race. To remove several associations at once, click Delete from the Edit Wire Capture screen. Keep in mind that deleting races from wire capture does not remove the underlying race in NewsTicker it simply removes the association between the imported data from the wire and the race you have configured in NewsTicker or, in some cases, it removes the association and then deletes itself from the wire capture list. If the race is re-fed, it will reappear in the list. Delete ALL wire races and associations This will remove everything in the Wire Capture screen and any associations that may have existed with local races in your system. Delete wire races that haven't been updated in 1 week This is the same as the previous command, but will only apply to those whose "updated" timestamp is older than a week. Delete wire races not associated with any local races This will remove races listed in Wire Capture that have not yet been associated. If the wire service feeds it down again, it will obviously re-appear. Keep wire races, but clear all associations This will remove the links (associations) from the listed wire races to the local races, allowing you to re-associate all of them. So, the "Race ID" column in the Wire Capture screen will be empty, but all of the wire races will still be listed. Automatic Race Updates NewsTicker s Elections module allows you to begin manually updating a race before returns from the wire service are available without disturbing the automatic update feature. When data is received from the wire, it will be compared against the total vote count already accumulated for the race and the source of the last update of the race. If the new vote count from the wire is smaller than the current vote count, and the last update was performed manually, NewsTicker will automatically use the existing vote

34 34 count. Conversely, if the last update was from the wire, and the wire is now sending smaller numbers, NewsTicker will assume that the wire service sent erroneous numbers earlier and is correcting its mistake, ingesting the newer, smaller numbers. Unlike any other election package, this logic allows you to switch between manually and automatically updating races without having to monitor when to cut over to the wire, while simultaneously giving you protection against errors. Automatic race updates will only occur if Wire Capture is set to Yes in General Configurations. Creating Race Display Groups Display groups are simply a collection of races you wish to air in a predefined order. You may create as many as you like, utilizing any combination of races. Race groups actually perform two important functions. First, they are a good way to quickly air specific races. For example you may create a display group called Late News Full Screens or Ticker Races. The other important function is for when you are using tprompt, our talent prompter software. Only if you are using a race display group will tprompt provide information about the next race in addition to the current race. Adding a New Group To add a new group, click Add Display Group. This will reveal a dialog box asking for a name for your new group. You ll want to make the name descriptive of what the group will be used for, such as 7:25 Cut-In or Late News. Enter the name and click OK which will reveal the Edit Display Group screen. To create your group, select a race from the list on the left and push the right arrow icon to add it to the list on the right, or simply double-click

35 35 the race. Alternatively, you can select multiple races by holding the CNTL key and clicking on each race you wish to add, followed by the arrow button. To insert a race in the middle of the display group, highlight the race immediately before the desired insertion point in the Display Group list, then double-click the race to add from the Races group. You can change the order of races by selecting a race and using the up and down arrow icons, or press the trash icon to remove the race from the group. To jump a race to the top or bottom of the list, use the and icons. Multiple races may appear more than once in a group. Entire display groups can be removed by clicking the Delete Display Group button at the bottom of the screen. Note that when you delete all races from General Configurations, your display groups are automatically removed. Auditing All Races Once all races are into the system, you can verify the integrity of your data by clicking Audit Race Setup from within the Configure menu. This screen will run through several tests to try and identify potential problems. A red box next to the report category denotes potential problems may have been found. Just because a potential problem is flagged does not necessarily mean it is a problem for you. Some tests may not apply to you as it varies based on display and usage. Active Notices This is a listing of any issues requiring immediate attention. Going into election night, there should be no active notices. Throughout the night, you should monitor this and respond to any notices that appear. At the moment, the only types of notices are those relating to Wire Capture. If the integrity of a race associated through Wire Capture is severed, likely because the wire service has changed the spelling of a name, then it will appear as an active notice. Races Without Candidates Setting up a race is a two-part process. First, you create the actual race, then you add candidates. This report provides you with a list of all races where no candidates are configured. tprompt Settings If you are using tprompt, NewsTicker s talent prompting software, then this report will show you the IP addresses it is configured for. If tprompt is not running on any of the addresses specified, it will slow down fullscreen operation. Races Without Anchor Prompt Line 1 While you may not provide anchor prompt information for every race, this report provides you a quick

36 36 glimpse at those where data is missing. This test only checks the first anchor prompt box. Races Without Jurisdiction Assignments One of the features of NewsTicker s Elections module is the ability to assign a jurisdiction or category to each race. If you use this feature, you can more easily group races together on inquiry reports and displays. This test identifies all races where you have not assigned a jurisdiction. Wire Capture Races With No Candidates Set When you establish an association between a race in Wire Capture and a local race in NewsTicker, it is a two-step process: first, you associate the race and precinct, and then you match the candidates. If you have skipped the second part, or the candidates lose association because the wire service changes the spelling of a name, then those races will be flagged here. Races Not Assigned to Any Display Group If you have created your own custom display groups, as described in the previous section, then this report is very useful. It looks through all of your custom display groups to see which races you have included, and reports those that haven t been assigned in any display group. Note that this only applies to your custom display groups as the internal Display All Races group will obviously show everything. Races With No Total Precincts When setting up each race, you can enter the total number of precincts that will be voting on that race. If a value is present, you are prompted for the number of precincts reporting when you enter a vote total. Otherwise, you will be prompted to enter the percentage of precincts reporting. This report shows you all races where you have not entered a value for total precincts. Note that it has nothing to do with actual number of votes received or precincts reporting. Fullscreen LOGIC File Usage This report is useful for checking how you have assigned fullscreen LOGIC files for each race. It allows your graphics person to easily perform a review without having to enter each race. Converting Primary Races to General Races NewsTicker has a powerful feature to make preparing for a general election even easier. If you used Elections for your primary election, then you can merge those races with a few mouse clicks to create the shell for the general election. For example, let s say your primary election had two races for State House District 13: one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans. The primary is over and you have a winner in both races. Now, you can tell NewsTicker to merge the two races together and a single race will remain

37 37 with the winner of each primary race as the two candidates in the new general race. The following occurs during a merge: > The full name, party affiliation, incumbent status, and picture ID of all winning candidates are maintained. > The anchor prompt lines of all merged races are combined. > The lowest Race ID of the individual races is used including its race name, jurisdiction, number of seats, fullscreen LOGIC file, total precincts, runoff information, and candidate ordering selection. In addition, NewsTicker will analyze the races being merged and make a suggestion for additional information in the anchor prompt lines including details about how much a particular candidate won by or if an incumbent lost. These are offered as suggestions that may be used on a race-by-race basis. Performing a Merge To proceed, your primary election should be complete and all races should have final results. Do not delete the old data at this time as NewsTicker requires it to perform the merge. Click Autocreate General Election from within the Configure menu. You are presented with all of the races from your previous election. NewsTicker has inspected these races and placed checkmarks next to those it thinks will be converted to the general election. These include all races whose candidates share the same party affiliation or contain no party designation at all. It specifically excludes any ballot proposals (yes/no races) it finds.

38 38 You should double check the list and place checkmarks next to those races that contain data to be used in the general election. Once you have finished your selection, press Continue. Note Any races not selected will be deleted out of the system and cannot be retrieved. At this point, you have indicated to NewsTicker which races contain data useful for the general election and deleted those that don t. Now, you need to perform the actual merge. A list of the races you just selected to work with now appears. From this list, highlight the first set of races you wish to merge together. In our example, we would choose the two State House District 13 races.

39 39 Once you ve made your selection, press Merge Selected to perform the operation. The selected races are combined with the losing candidates purged and you are placed into the Edit Race screen for further refining, such as updating the race name to remove party references or deleting primary-specific information from the anchor prompt lines. You are also presented with an anchor prompt recommendation by NewsTicker based on analysis of the races you merged. If you click OK, they will be added to anchor prompt line 1. If you press Cancel, they will not be used. Continue this same process for all additional races. Note You can Merge Selected on a single race. In this instance, NewsTicker will remove all but the winning candidates. This is useful for non-partisan primaries such as judgeships where a larger group of candidates may run in a primary with the top three candidates competing for a single open seat in the general election.

40 40 4 Election Night Tasks Instructions for updating and displaying races on election night. Entering Vote Totals Proper and well thought out setup makes it quicker to get vote totals into the system on election night. From the Elections main menu, click Edit Results. This is where manual vote entry for all races is done. If you are not using precincts, then you would enter the ID number of the race you wish to edit. (For a complete listing off all races configured, enter? as the ID.) If you supply your stringers with a list of the ID numbers of all of their races, they can tell this directly to the person taking calls, speeding up vote entry. You can press the ENTER key or Edit to proceed. To reduce errors, only the minimum amount of information required to take-in vote totals is presented. If you are using precincts, as described in the previous chapter, there are three ways to enter results: Race ID Enter the ID of the race (e.g. 105). You will be presented with a listing of all precincts assigned to the race. You can then select a specific precinct to enter results for. Once a race has been associated with precincts, you cannot override the results by directly entering total numbers. By bringing a precinct-by-precinct race up by its Race ID, you can quickly see which specific precincts have yet to report.

41 41 Precinct ID Typically, you will be fielding calls from the precinct (or virtual precinct) itself and you ll want to retrieve all races for that entity. In this case, simply enter the ID of the precinct into the Race ID field. You will then be placed directly into the results editor for the first race assigned to the precinct. After entering the results, you can click Next Race to save your entry and move to the next one in the sequence. You can jump around all of the races assigned to the precinct by clicking Show All. This is the preferred method for entering results into NewsTicker Elections. Race ID.Precinct ID Using dot-notation, you can recall a specific precinct s results for a particular race. Simply place a dot between the Race ID and the Precinct ID (e.g. 105.Cook32). When editing results, if you provided a number for Total Precincts when you set up the race, you will be prompted to enter the current number of precincts reporting. If you didn t provide a count of precincts, you are instead prompted to enter the percentage of precincts reporting. When using precincts, you will not be prompted if it is set to logically count as just one precinct. Also note that when using precincts, you cannot simply enter a percentage of precincts reporting you must use hard values. This is because it is mathematically impossible to derive an accurate overall percentage from two or more separate percentages. (For example, let s say in the first race you have 5 of 15 precincts reporting (33%) and 25 of 50 (50%) in the second. The accurate overall percentage is 30 of 65 (46%). But, you can t get that by just using 33% and 50%. The closest you can get is an average which would be 42%, which clearly is not accurate.)

42 42 The Edit Results screen is optimized to function with minimal use of the mouse. Simply pressing TAB will move you from field to field. The percent of the total vote for each candidate is calculated automatically and updated on the screen for quick verification. When done, press Save to record your changes. To help prevent mistakes in manually entering data, NewsTicker will present you with warnings if the sum of all votes cast or precincts reporting decreases, or if you increase the vote count but not the number of precincts reporting. If you have chosen to have NewsTicker automatically assign winner flags from within General Configurations, this will occur automatically when 100% of precincts have reported. To prevent accidental flagging, you cannot normally modify the winner flags from within the Edit Results screen. However, when entering a race number to edit, holding down the ALT key while pressing Edit will present you with the Edit Results screen and winner flag editing. Note that you can also edit the results of a race by holding down SHIFT while clicking on the race ID within a report, and edit the results and winner flags by holding down ALT and clicking on the race ID within a report. There is no limit on the number of people who may update election results at any given time. As long as they have a network connection that can see your NewsTicker server, they can use Internet Explorer to perform updates, including remotely via VPN or PPP. Editing Winner/Runoff Flags If configured, NewsTicker will automatically flag winners once 100% of precincts are reporting for a given race. At the same time, if you specified a runoff is possible, it will determine those flags too. Producers may manually assign winner flags at any time if, for instance, one candidate has a large lead and the outcome is predictable. From the Elections main menu, click Edit Winner Flags to display all of the races you are covering. This provides you a view of everything at once. For ease of identifying races that don t have declared winners, their race number will be displayed more prominently. The Edit Winner Flag screen also provides the percentage of precincts currently reporting (RPTG) and the percent difference between the top two vote getters (SPREAD). This allows you to determine, at a glance, those

43 43 races that can be flagged early and those that might require a larger return before being declared. To specify winning or runoff candidates, simply click on the name of the race and select either Winner or Runoff from the dropdown box next to the respective candidate(s). You may flag as many winners as there are seats for each particular race, as declared when you initially created the race. If you attempt to flag more winners than there are seats, a prompt will be displayed asking you to confirm your selection. Winner and runoff flags may be assigned directly when editing results if the ALT key was held down while pressing Edit when calling up a race via Edit Results. They can also be edited by holding down ALT and clicking the race ID from within a report.

44 44 Note If you manually flag a candidate, your option will override anything fed by the wire service for the same race. Thus, if you declare a winner before the wire does, subsequent wire updates to vote totals will maintain your winner selection. Viewing Reports While displaying to a CG is one of the main benefits of an election package, certain newsroom personnel such as producers and talent will want to review results along the way. Report Types From the main Elections screen, a report can be selected for viewing. There are seven canned reports. All races by race number This report provides everything configured for the current election in order by race number, which likely reflects the order in which you entered each race. All races by update time This report places the most recently updated races first and those that haven t been updated last. All races ordered by race name 1 This shows all races, alphabetized by information in the race name 1 field. All races ordered by race name 4 This shows all races, alphabetized by information in the race name 4 field. All races with results In this view, only those races that have a total vote count greater than zero are shown, in order of race ID. All races without results This view is useful for finding precincts or stringers who haven t reported in, allowing you to quickly make calls to get numbers. All races grouped by jurisdiction If you have assigned jurisdictions to each race, then this view will group races first by the jurisdiction and then by race number. In addition, any display groups that you created are available for reporting, allowing you to choose the desired order and races. Report Detail For each race, you may also choose a level of detail.

45 45 Summary In summary view, you see the race ID and name, time of last update, percentage of precincts reporting, and current race leader or winner. If you rollover the race with your mouse, you also see candidate vote counts and percentages, including a bar graph. Detailed The detailed view is exactly the same as the summary view, except all of the individual candidate information remains visible and doesn t rollup when your mouse is not on the race. It also provides the added ability to rollover a notes icon next to the race name to view anchor prompt lines for that race. Precinct This view provides a grid, revealing vote totals and reporting information by precinct for each race in the report type. If you rollover a precinct name, its respective contact information will appear. Clicking on the precinct name will launch the website you specified. If a race has been updated in the last five minutes, the race ID will blink red to indicate a recent update. If it was last updated more than 24 hours ago, the timestamp changes to >24 and placing your mouse over the

46 46 timestamp reveals the actual time of update. If the race was updated since the last time you displayed it on your fullscreen CG, the timestamp will switch to a red background. The Current Leader column shows you at-a-glance who is currently ahead in the race. If a winner has been flagged, the name will appear in bold. You can edit a race directly from within a report by holding down SHIFT and clicking on the race ID. If you wish to edit the vote totals and winner flags, press ALT while clicking on the race ID. The report will automatically refresh itself regularly, allowing you to leave the window open. Displaying Fullscreens By the time election night rolls along, you will have fully tested all of the templates you will be using for your fullscreens. During your coverage, you can display an individual race fullscreen or step through a predefined display group. From the Elections main menu, choose Full Screens. The CG configured in General Configurations for full screens is listed along with the option to choose a display group or air an individual race. If you enter a race number and click Send to CG, NewsTicker will use the assigned LOGIC file to display the most up-to-date results. At the same time, information about the race will be sent to any tprompt displays configured in the system. If you choose a display group, you will see your races in the specified order. When you are ready to air the highlighted race, press ENTER or click Send to CG. If tprompt is configured to show information about the next race (preview), it will be sent to the prompt display at the same time. NewsTicker will automatically highlight the next race in the list allowing you to simply use ENTER to step through the entire display group no mouse clicking is required. If there are more candidates to display for a particular race and the LOGIC file has been configured to display them, then a prompt will appear after you have aired the first screen asking if you wish to display the next set of candidates. If you press Enter or click OK, the next set is sent to the CG. If you press Esc or click Cancel, then you will exit from that race and can choose another race to send to the CG.

47 47 It s also possible to override the default LOGIC file assigned to a race when feeding it to your CG. This is useful, for example, when you show a fullscreen of a particular race during an anchor s lede, but then need to show a lower-third of that same race during the reporter s live remote. In this case, the producer would send the fullscreen to the CG by selecting the race and pressing ENTER. It will use the LOGIC file assigned during race setup. When ready for the lower-third, the producer would simply change Default LOGIC to the appropriate lower-third LOGIC file, and re-send the race. If, however, the original race was not assigned to use Default as the LOGIC file, the producer would need to toggle Override Assigned LOGIC on in order for the dropdown box selection to take precedence. Note that these override settings are sticky, in that they persist while the screen is open. However, they are not destructive, in that they don t change any backend setting. With this in mind, you could open two send fullscreen windows: one set to show fullscreens, and the other with override commands for displaying lower-thirds, and move between the two as necessary. Displaying a Ticker Airing election data in your ticker is done the same way as all other NewsTicker modules. From within the Broadcast module, you add Elections to your runlevel and choose the desired LOGIC file. Note that races displayed through the Broadcast module do not get sent to tprompt. Lower-fifths can be either crawled or cut depending on how the LOGIC file is written. You may also designate a special order for your results by selecting a display group specifically for your lower-fifths from within General Configurations. One of the features of NewsTicker is the fact that Elections is integrated with all other modules. That means you can mix election results with other NewsTicker data, whether it s headlines, sports scores or current weather conditions. This is particularly useful for your morning show the day after an election. No longer do you have to stop your election display to start your morning news display. On election night, you might opt to run election-related headlines with the vote totals. And, of course, there is always the doomsday scenario that on election night, you have severe weather, schools are closings, and there is a major breaking news event NewsTicker could be displaying it all without having to stop and start.

48 48 Making Last-Minute Changes Even the most prepared and seasoned newsrooms can be caught off guard on election night with spelling mistakes or an unexpected race that slipped through the cracks. Changes can be made at anytime to the race setup just keep in mind your display groups and precinct assignments.

49 49 5 Configuring tprompt Instructions for configuring and using the election talent prompter program. Overview The tprompt program is a standalone application specifically designed to be used by the talent during unscripted continuous election coverage. It is a hands off system, capable of showing details about the current race in sync with your fullscreen CG, as well as the next race (preview), including race title, candidate vote information, precincts reporting, and specially entered prompt information. The fields, font size, colors, and order used is customizable by the station on a per-display basis. Up to six individual tprompt displays can be running in the studio or other network addressable location, like a live camera in the newsroom or an elections update desk. Here is an example of a full screen with what the tprompt display might be showing:

50 50 Profile Basics The tprompt application is not just powerful because of the data it can display, but also because of the ability for your talent to customize the presentation of the information to maximize utility. The specific look and order of fields is defined as a profile. An unlimited number of profiles can be created that provide a different look and feel. Each instance of tprompt can use a different profile to create a unique function for each. Creating New Profiles To create a new profile, choose New from the File menu and enter a name for the profile. You can also use the icon that looks like a document. This is the starting point for generating a new layout. Loading an Existing Profile If you want to use an existing profile, either choose Open from the File menu or press the folder icon. The last profile used will always be loaded when you restart tprompt. Deleting Profiles To delete an unwanted profile, simply choose Delete from the File menu. Printing Profile Details You may spend quite a bit of time tweaking the tprompt display to get it just the way your talent wants it. After doing so, it is a good idea to print the specifics of your profile and a sample screenshot of the layout to place into your planning book for the next election. From the File menu, choose Print Setup and configure your printer. If you are going to print a sample of the screen, you may wish to change the orientation to Landscape to better represent the proportions of a TV screen. Print Screen will provide a printout of the tprompt output and Print Profile lists the specifics of all your settings. Profile Formatting Once you ve created a new profile, you can begin editing it. Be sure the profile you wish to edit is loaded and choose Edit Current from the Profile menu, or press the eraser icon.

51 51 Data Fields You are first presented with the data fields you wish to use in your display. Remember that you can use more than one display at a time and they can be showing different things. Most of the fields are self-explanatory and take effect as soon as you select them so that you can see the change immediately. When configuring how to display the candidate name, if you only choose a first or last name, keep in mind Yes/No proposals to make sure those names appear correctly in the tprompt output. The Display Race field is probably the only one that requires some explanation. Current Air Race With this set, the race currently being displayed on the CG will be synched with tprompt. Preview Race When using a display group to air fullscreens, the next race in the list will be prompted when this setting is used. This is useful when two tprompt monitors are placed in the studio so that the anchor not reading the current race can prepare for the next race.

52 52 Sequence Left/Sequence Right With the Current Air Race and Preview Race configuration, one monitor display is always showing what is on air and the other is always showing what is coming up. If the second anchor is ahead of the CG and begins reading from the preview monitor, he will have to jump to the program display as soon as the race is live on air. Using left and right sequencing, the program and preview will alternate. For example, the sequence left display first shows the current race and the sequence right display shows the preview race. Then, the preview race goes on air. At this point, the left display continues to show the same race, which is now the current race, and the right display shows the next race, or the preview race. The race that is currently on-air will have a red border around the display to indicate it is live. Formatting Once you have decided on the fields you wish to use, you can then determine formatting. For each field, you can determine the font face (based on any currently installed font), size and color, background color, characteristics (bold, italic, underline), and justification within the region (left, center, right). You may also choose the order of each set of data. For the anchor prompt lines, we recommend a narrower font, such as U67 (or Universe ) or Helvetica Condensed Black, which will allow for more text in the region while maintaining readability. You may wish to consult your art department, which will likely have a larger library of fonts, to find a suitable one. There are a couple of ways in which a winner can be highlighted. You can choose different display characteristics, such as a bolder font and different colored background. You can also use an icon, such as a checkmark, to designate the winner. Winner flags must be in either GIF, JPEG, or PNG format. General The General tab provides a couple of extra formatting options for your profile. Title Text If you wish to include a static title that can appear on each screen, such as a reminder of your station s website address, enter it here. The formatting of this field is set in the Formatting tab as Display Title Text, and will always appear at the top. Background Color This option sets the default background color of the display when a data field has not overridden this setting with a specific background color.

53 53 Border Size This setting creates or inhibits a defined border around all of the elements in your profile, similar to using borders in a Microsoft Word table. Text Padding Space Increasing this number will provide a larger amount of gutter space around the inside of data fields. For example, with no padding space, candidate names will appear as follows: With a padding value of 8, candidates appear as: Divider Size While Text Padding Space provides greater space within a cell, Divider Size does the same around the outside of the cell. We ll use the same example. With a size of 1: And, with a size of 8: As soon as you exit the Profile Edit screen and accept the changes, they will automatically be saved. Election Night Use After performing all of the requested adjustments, it is a good idea to run through all of the races to make sure everything will fit correctly using your specific formatting at the resolution the monitor will be set to. To maximize the display on your monitor, double-click the program bar that contains the words tprompt the Newsroom Solutions Talent Prompter. You can then turn off the extra menus by unchecking Toolbar and Status Bar from the View menu.

54 54 There are also ways to turn off the task bar at the bottom of the screen to create a little extra space. In Windows XP, you can do this by rightclicking on the Start icon, choosing Properties, and setting Auto-hide the taskbar in the Taskbar tab. Keep in mind that you can run two versions of tprompt on the same computer. This is useful if are able to output to two different monitors from one PC. The NewsTicker server must be capable of sending data to ports 2000 and 2001 on each PC in which you are running tprompt. Of course, you can also run tprompt on more than one machine, such as two laptops on the anchor desk. You can copy a profile to another machine simply by moving the.pro file. Be sure the same fonts and winner flag graphics are installed on the second system.

55 55 6 Parsing Web Results Instructions for configuring and using the imacros and Agent software. Overview More than ever, the web has become a reliable source for rapidly updating election results. Each year, more county clerks post results online to serve their citizens and accommodate the media. Extracting these sites, however, can be challenging. Some races are all on one page, some are broken out. Some list the candidates in alphabetical order, some list them in vote order. Some have fancy bar graphs next to vote counts, some have a very plain design. Some require you to log in with a password, some have hidden links. Some give you a one week testing period, some don t even post a page until results start coming in. More directly, there is no standard for how or when this information is presented, which means any parser has to be flexible enough to accommodate the majority of designs in existence today. NewsTicker Elections has integrated with imacros by iopus TM, one of the best web automation and extraction tools available, to provide an enterprise-grade solution to parsing web results. For most election websites, imacros requires no programming knowledge on your part since the software is based on point-and-click technology. However, we recommend a person with IT knowledge be assigned to build the parsers since they ll likely get built faster and more reliably, especially when it comes to more complicated websites. You can start building your parsers the second the webpage becomes available, even at the last-minute if a county didn t provide you access in

56 56 advance. Once your parsers have been built, you simply load them into imacros Agent, NewsTicker s exclusive middleware that will automatically cycle through all of your macros on a schedule and feed them into NewsTicker Elections. Web results appear in wire capture, ready to be associated with the master races in NewsTicker. And, with wire capture as the ingestion point, you have the power to scrape the web and use a wire service for the same race, with NewsTicker Elections automatically choosing the best results. Note that the imacros Agent is an optional component to NewsTicker Elections and must be purchased separately through Newsroom Solutions. Creating Parsers (Macros) The first step in web automation is to build your parser. This is done using imacros, which refers to each parser as a macro. The link to download the correct version of imacros, as well as your license key, will be provided by Newsroom Solutions once you have purchased the web automation option. (This documentation refers to imacros version 6.20.) Install the imacros software following the prompts in the installer. To launch the imacros Browser, navigate to Start > All Programs > imacros > imacros Browser. The application consists of three main parts: the menu along the top, the macro control area along the left, and a web browser in the large area on the right. The macro control area shows a listing of sample macros that come with the software. These are explained within the documentation from iopus. Below these macros are three tabs: Play, Rec and Edit. Since we need to record a new parser, click the Rec tab. In the web browser area on the right, enter the following URL and press Go (or the Enter key): This page contains demonstration websites. For this example, click on Jefferson Co, KY Council 18 Rep. A page with sample results should appear. Next, we ll begin recording our macro by clicking the Record button in the macro control area. The Rec tab must be active to see the Record button. Once recording, the list of macros is replaced with a panel noting your mouse clicks.

57 57 Before we begin extracting, a reference point must be set within the race we wish to extract. This becomes very important when you are dealing with multiple races on the same page. In this example, we ll click the race title COUNCIL 18 REP, which will place a blue box around the text, and press the Extract Data button from within the Rec tab to reveal the content extraction wizard. Now, you are ready to begin highlighting elements to extract. As long as you are descriptive later when it is time to name the macro, it s not necessary to extract the race title since every race will be in its own macro and the name of the macro is passed along to NewsTicker Elections. We ll begin by grabbing the number of precincts reporting. We don t need the text that says Precincts Reporting, rather the actual number of precincts. Click 20 to the right of the Precincts Reporting label. A green box appears around the text and 20 appears in the content extraction wizard: The imacros software has analyzed the HTML code surrounding that text and determined how it can reliably extract it in the future. To confirm it has done this correctly, press Test EXTRACT Tag and that value should now appear in the yellow area below the button. To set this as the first element to extract, press the Add this EXTRACT Tag button in the extraction wizard.

58 58 Next, jump up to the Number of Precincts line. Following the same procedure as before, click on 22. Again, it will be highlighted with a green box. Press Test EXTRACT Tag, confirm it extracted 22 and press Add this EXTRACT Tag. All that remains is pulling in the candidate information. You start by first extracting the candidate s name ( Ellen REITMEYER ), then her vote total ( 719 ). Then extract the next name ( Joyce K. JENNINGS ), and her vote total ( 608 ). Finally, extract the last name ( Jon ACKERSON ), followed by his vote total ( 1,747 ). At this point, your macro is done. Press Stop from within the Rec tab, followed by the Save button. Name your new macro Jefferson- Council 18-GOP. Your macro should now appear in the list. The next step is to test the macro from within imacros. To do this, simply switch to the Play tab and double-click the macro from the list. imacros will load the page, highlight each element in a green box, and present a popup every time it finds a value that you chose to extract. It is important that you not only verify the value is accurate, but that it is pulling that value from the correct box. In cases where everybody s vote total is zero, the value may look right even if it is pulling from somebody else s votes. To prevent this, visually confirm each green box as it appears. Also note that a blue box around a value represents a reference point that data is not extracted. The only data that gets extracted is outlined in green, which is confirmed through the popup boxes when you play the macro within imacros.

59 59 Using NewsTicker imacros Agent Creating parsers is only one-third of the process. The macros are responsible for extracting the data elements you have selected when run, as it did when we played back our sample. The second-third is automating the execution of the macros, and feeding the results into NewsTicker Elections wire capture area. This is done using imacros Agent. (The final-third, as you ll see later, is matching the race inside of wire capture.) Install the NewsTicker imacros Agent software on the PC you plan on dedicating to web parsing on election night. Note that it can be installed on multiple computers if you wish to balance the load, however imacros must also be installed. The Macro Loop Control area is where you insert all of the macros you wish to run, in the desired order. The Delays and Timeouts section lets you adjust the timing of the loop. Macro Delay The amount of time to wait between macros in the loop. The default is 5 Seconds, giving you the ability to pause or stop the loop more easily. Loop Delay The amount of time to wait after the loop has completed, before starting the next loop.

60 60 Macro Timeout When running a macro, the amount of time imacros Agent should wait for it to complete before canceling the operation and moving on. This includes the amount of time it takes to start-up imacros, grab the page from the web server, parse the page, and return the results. If the number is too low, it could prematurely end a macro even though results are imminent. If the number is too high, it could slow down all of your other macros if there is a problem. Finally, the Automation Status area lets you start and stop the automated macro processing of the macros in the loop, as well as reports on the overall progress of the operation. The Edit > Options screen allows you to set some of the imacros Agent s configurations. Default Source ID For most applications, the default IMA will work fine. For more information on this feature, see Using a Different Source ID in the Advanced Concepts section. Delivery Method If the Agent software is running on your LAN, choose Connect to local NewsTicker server. If a consultant outside of your station is running the software, and will be using TickerWire as the delivery method, then choose Connect thru TickerWire. Server Enter the hostname or IP of the server matching your selected delivery method. In most cases, this will be your local NewsTicker server. If authentication is required, select the checkbox and enter the username and password to use. The Test Connection button may be used to confirm communication with the server. Directories This is the location of the imacros files you create. All of your macros must reside in the same directory.

61 61 Warning Audio If an error is detected during automated extraction of your macros, an audio tone will be played. You can test the tone, including the volume of your speakers, by pressing Error Tone. Once you have imacros Agent configured, click Add from the main screen in the Macro Loop Control area. A file explorer window will appear, defaulted to the directory listed in Edit > Options. Select the Jefferson-Council 18-GOP macro. Next, an Edit Style dialog will appear. This is a key step. When you create a macro, the order in which you extract the elements is remembered. When the Agent then goes to play the macro, the data is returned in that same order. This screen allows you to specify if you extracted a race title, and if so, how many. It also lets you specify the style in which the precinct data appears. Note that order is vital. imacros Agent is expecting the data in the order specified on this screen. So, if you will be including race title(s), it must be first. The precinct information must come next. Finally, all of the candidate information must be last. If you extract in a different order, the macro will not work. Race Title Extracting a race title directly from the webpage is optional. Actually, it s discouraged. When the race is fed into NewsTicker s wire capture area, the name of the macro will be included along with it. So it is preferred to be strategic with the macro naming, including the jurisdiction, race, and party (if it s a primary). For example, Cook-President-Dem and Cook-President-GOP would be the Cook County totals for the presidential primary. NC-Proposal1 would be how the state (of North Carolina) voted in Proposal 1. You can feed up to two race title fields. Select the option that matches how many fields you extracted from the macro. In our example, it would be No race title. Precincts Reporting There are many different styles in which precinct information is provided on a webpage. If you are able to pull out the number of precincts reporting in one field, and the total precincts in a second field, then choose Precincts reporting, Total precincts (2 fields). That s the style our example is using. If you can only extract the number of precincts reporting, and not the total precincts, or if you want to use the total precincts listed in the master race inside of NewsTicker, then choose Precincts reporting (No total precincts). In this case, you would have extracted only one precinct field in the macro.

62 62 While an actual number of precincts reporting is preferred, it isn t always possible. If the race only lists the percentage of precincts reporting, and you wish to use the extraction anyway, then select Percentage of precincts reporting. NewsTicker Elections will compute the number of precincts reporting based on the total precincts configured in the master race. Again, you would have extracted only one precinct field in the macro if selecting this option. In some cases, the only way for imacros to extract the precinct information is as a complete phrase where both the precincts reporting and total precincts appear in one extraction tag. This becomes obvious when you go to click on the number of precincts reporting and both get highlighted together, as in these two examples: In this case, select xxx of yyy precincts reporting. In both of these cases, the imacros Agent is able to use the first set of numbers it finds for precincts reporting, and the second set for total precincts. In cases where the first set of numbers is the percentage reporting, the second set is the precincts reporting, and the third set is the total precincts (see below), use (Pre%) xxx of yyy precincts reporting. Note that later, when you test the macro in Agent, pay close attention to the precinct numbers to be sure the extraction occurred correctly. Candidate Information As in our example, the remaining extracted data must be in the form of candidate name, candidate votes, next candidate s name, next candidate s votes, etc. Source ID If you have multiple macros parsing different websites for the same election results, then each macro must have a unique Source ID. This is a very unique scenario and, in most cases, is left blank. But, as an example, if you were parsing results from the Jones Co. Clerk s website, and you had a second parser extracting Jones County-specific results from the secretary of state s website, each of those macros would have to have a unique ID. This is to prevent NewsTicker Elections from overwriting higher numbers from one macro with lower ones from another. (See Using a Different Source ID in the Advanced Concepts section.) Before being added to the loop, the macro is tested against your style selection so you can confirm your parser is working as expected. (This can

63 63 also be done once in the loop by highlighting the macro and pressing Test.) This will run the selected parser through imacros, and present a screen showing the results. If the extracted elements do not line up in the correct categories, close the dialog and correct your style choices. If the items are not in the correct order, you must edit the macro directly in imacros, or re-record it. Pressing Send will execute the highlighted macro and feed the results into NewsTicker Elections wire capture mechanism. This should only be done after you have performed a test and know the data is formatted correctly. Assuming the results were transmitted successfully, your results will appear in Configure > Edit Wire Capture within NewsTicker alongside all of the other captured races. The slug will be the name of the macro. You can associate the results with a race in NewsTicker the same way you would a race from your wire service. Race integrity issues will also appear in Active Notices. Once you ve added all of the desired macros into the loop, you can press Play to begin the automation cycle. There are some things worth noting about our example race that made it ideal for writing a quick parser. Normal HTML When a webpage looks like a webpage (images, different styles, links, etc), then it is most likely formatted in HTML, the language of the web. The imacros software uses these HTML tags to know where it is on the page. Pages that are formatted exclusively in a mono-spaced font, or PDF files, will not parse correctly. Fortunately, the majority of results are in normal HTML webpages. Single Races The webpage contained one race per page, so we didn t have to take the added step of scrolling through a list. It also reduces the potential for mistakes since the only vote totals on the page are from a single race. Extracting a race from a page with several races can certainly be done, but adds time to the process. Sample Data Our example race had sample vote totals making it real quick and easy to test. But, when you create a parser where the vote total fields from a webpage are all zero, it requires you to pay more attention during the testing phase. Without unique vote totals, you have to make sure the 0 that is being presented in the popup is indeed the vote total for that candidate, and not somebody else. Ideally, you would work with your local county clerks to have access to a version of the page with test results, and build your parser off of that. (Better yet if they are doing their own test and so the numbers are changing!) Even if they you the

64 64 HTML and you make your parser from that, it s a simple change in the macro to point it to the live page. Building a Macro with All Zeroes for Results In our second example, we ll set up a parser for a race where all of the votes are set to zero. In the imacros browser, navigate to: Click on Kentucky Presidential Primary. A page with the Democratic and Republican races for president appears. Start recording by pressing Record from within the Rec tab. Open the extraction wizard by clicking Democratic Primary Results as the reference point, and pressing Extract Data. Click on the number of precincts reporting ( 0 ). It correctly finds the value, so press Add this EXTRACT Tag to save it. Next, click on the number of total precincts ( 3,545 ) and extract it. Since we are building this macro for the Democratic race, select the first candidate ( Hillary Clinton ) as you normally would, and extract it. Note that the value for POS in the extraction wizard is 1. POS stands for position, and when you are extracting data from a table like this, that number will typically increase with each cell it finds. (Sometimes there are hidden cells that you don t see, used for spacing.) With that in mind, select her vote count ( 0 ), and note the POS value changed to 3. If you press the -1 button next to the POS value, the position changes to 2 and the test extracted becomes D (her party affiliation). Pressing the -1 button again shows a POS value of 1, her name. This should help illustrate how imacros is pulling data out of the table. Advance the POS value back to 3 by pressing the +1 button twice and add the extract tag. Continue with the remaining candidates and vote totals as you normally would. We do recommend that you also add the Uncommitted or Write In candidates since it will ensure your vote percentages match what the county or state is reporting. You can always make that candidate invisible in NewsTicker Elections so that it never displays. When you save and play back the macro, you must be extra vigilant. Since the test value for each candidate s vote will be 0, you must watch as each popup appears and confirm imacros correctly highlights the text box you expect. When the popups are done, you are left with a screen of blue and green boxes. If not all of the vote counts are outlined, it means you have a problem! In the illustration below, we are missing the vote total for Obama:

65 65 Even if your webpage has sample data, be sure to watch the imacros test of the macro very carefully to catch any issues with the POS element. Extracting a Single Race from a List of Races Now, we ll work with a common scenario: there are several races on a single page. As we mentioned earlier, you must build a macro for each race, which not only reduces errors in creating the macros, but makes it easier to recover if one race isn t parsing correctly. In the imacros browser, navigate to: Click on Jefferson Co, KY Primary. A page with sample results should appear. Scroll down to the second-to-last race, 30TH JUDGE CIRCUIT 4TH DIV. Start recording by pressing Record from within the Rec tab. Click on the race name ( 30TH JUDGE CIRCUIT 4TH DIV ) and open the extraction wizard. Toggle the Relative to last TAG element checkbox on, then click on the number of precincts reporting ( 0 ). Since you toggled the relative checkbox on, you are performing relative extractions. This mean the POS value starts counting relative to the last tagged item in blue, which would be the race title. If you did not perform a relative extraction, it would take much longer to create macros since it is a very CPU-intensive operation for the wizard to scan through a large HTML page to pull out your element. And, if anything higher on the page changed, your parser would break. By tagging the race title first, the parser jumps to that part of the page and starts parsing from that point forward, ignoring everything before it. For these reasons, you should

66 66 always use relative extractions when parsing a race from a list of multiple races. Continue highlighting and extracting fields as you did in the previous examples, being sure to keep Relative to last TAG element checked. The real test of whether the extraction worked correctly is when you play the macro back. It is especially important to pay close attention to which boxes get highlighted to make sure it s only the boxes in the desired race. As we ve noted before, if your POS values are off, it doesn t make a difference if everything is highlighted correctly during the recording session what matters is what gets highlighted in the playback session. Best Practices Listed below are recommendations when using the NewsTicker imacros Agent. They are provided to maximize reliability and eliminate errors. Use Capable Staff The imacros software is one of the most intuitive screen scrapers to use, which is why we chose to integrate with it. But, as you can tell, you can quickly get into a webpage that involves more than a few simple clicks. We recommend you assign the task of building and maintaining election macros to somebody who has some IT experience, preferably a person who has a passing understanding of HTML. A web developer is more than qualified. They will understand the concepts

67 67 behind the extraction much quicker, and can probably even edit the macro directly without any trouble. Dedicate a Person/Team On election night, we suggest you dedicate a person (or team of people) to monitor the macros. There will likely be some last minute changes, or a county may not make their website available until results start coming in. You ll want somebody to be monitoring the operation of the parsers, and fix macros if necessary. In addition, you may want to have an intern or backup person who can manually type in the results of a parser that isn t working, or still needs to be built, so that you have preliminary results while the macros are being worked on. Use Multiple Workstations If you anticipate any last-minute building of parsers, or want to be prepared for problems that might arise with the macros once results start coming in, we suggest using multiple workstations, letting the imacros Agent run on its own dedicated computer. A laptop would work well since you don t need to use the keyboard or mouse much. Let s say you have a team of two people assigned to election-night macros. Both people would build and test on their own computer, then transfer the final macro over to the laptop running imacros Agent via a shared drive. Then, simply add the macro to the running list and you won t have to worry about stopping the loop automation to re-build a template. Note that you can install imacros Agent on the two computers used to build macros so that you can apply the appropriate style and test the parser prior to moving it into production. Request Test Data As described earlier, it is better to build parsers with actual test data rather than a website full of zeroes. Many county clerks and secretaries of state have a testing period where they run random numbers through their voting system to make sure things are working. They usually test their web export at the same time. If you contact them in advance, they may be able to give you access during their testing period so you can not only build your parser more easily, but run it against their changing results. Build Early Some parsers are easier to build than others and some may not work at all. The earlier you have access to the webpage you need to parse, and begin writing your macros, the sooner you ll know what problems (if any) you ll run into. If you were counting on using imacros for a particular county page, and wait until election night to build a parser only to realize the format isn t compatible, you may not have enough staff to keep up with manually entering those results. But be careful to re-test anything you build early to make sure it still works, just in case changes were made on the webpage, such as the formatting of a race name.

68 68 Name Macros Strategically All of your macros, once transmitted, will appear in NewsTicker s Wire Capture screen alphabetized, with the name of the macro as the slug. For ease of administration, we suggest you be strategic with how you name each macro, starting with the jurisdiction name, then race name, followed by district if appropriate, and ending with party (if a primary). For example: SC-York Commissioner Dist 05-Dem. The first part ( SC-York ) includes the state and county name since this station s DMA is in multiple states. The second part ( Commission Dist 05 ) uses a two-digit district number so that the macro will be alphabetized with districts greater than 9. Finally, the third part ( Dem ) indicates this is the race for the Democratic party. If you use a consistent naming convention, it will be easier to find the name when you need it. Re-Run Parsers Thru imacros As you saw earlier, the best way to verify the integrity of your parser, that the fields you think you are pulling are indeed the ones being pulled, is by playing them through imacros and visually confirming which fields get outlined in green. If you skip this step, or aren t careful when doing it, you could end up with wrong numbers on the air! Verify Initial Results As results start coming in, and your macros begin detecting numbers other than zero, you should confirm the parsed numbers with those from the website. This will help you detect any mismatches early on. Outsource if Appropriate There are computer consultants in every town local colleges and even high school computer teachers can be great resources. Even iopus, the makers of imacros, has a fee-for-service model, as well as a web forum of people who have used the software. The NewsTicker imacros Agent is designed to be run either at the station, or remotely, with results tunneled through TickerWire into your server. Advanced Concepts This section contains additional information and techniques for more advanced users. Accessing a Website with Authentication Some subscription-only election websites require you to provide a username and password before getting to the results page. In most cases, imacros can record this information along with the macro. Navigate to the login screen of the website and begin recording your macro. After entering your username and password, press the button to login. imacros will continue to record your mouse movements as you click on the link containing the race you wish to extract. Use the

69 69 extraction wizard as you normally would. If there is a log out button on the site, be sure to record that action in the macro since you may not be able to login for several minutes after running the macro if you don t log out first. Changing the URL in the Macro There are times when you will create a macro in advance, only to find the web address has changed on election night. This is particularly true if you were ed a sample page and built your parser off that. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to change the address without recreating the entire macro. In imacros, highlight the macro in the listing and click Edit Macro from within the Edit tab. The source code of the macro will appear in a text editor the same code that appeared in the orange panel as you were creating the macro. Look for the line that begins URL GOTO= and replace the old address with the new one. Now, simply re-save the macro and test it to confirm it works with the new URL. Using a Different Source ID NewsTicker Elections is able to accommodate multiple automated sources all trying to update the same race, determine which one has the best results, and react accordingly. Each source is given a unique ID and NewsTicker remembers the last source ID to have successfully updated the master race. If a different source ID attempts to update the race, and has lower numbers than what is currently in the race, it will not get updated. If, however, the same source ID attempts to update the race, and has lower numbers than what is currently in the race, it will be updated based on the assumption the source is fixing its own mistake. If you were using AP s FTP election service, and decided to also configure AP NewsPower as a backup, even though it is slower, each would have to have its own source ID to prevent NewsPower results from lowering those fed in via the FTP service. The same is true with your web results. If, for example, you have a parser running against a local county clerk s website, and a second parser running against the county s results on the secretary of state s website, you will want each parser to have a unique source ID. That way, the slower secretary of state results won t overwrite the faster county clerk numbers, while still allowing for mistakes to be corrected automatically. The source ID is configured through the NewsTicker imacros Agent. In Edit > Options, there is a default source ID setting that will be used for all macros run on that system. If all of your county parsers were run from

70 70 one computer, and the state parsers were run from another, you could simply make the adjustment here and be set. However, if multiple parsers updating the same master race will be run from the same computer, you will need to assign a unique ID at the macro level. This is done when you add a macro to the automation loop, or edit its style. If the source ID field is left blank in the style screen, it will use the defaulted ID in Edit > Options. If you never have more than one web parser pointed at a single race in NewsTicker, then you never need to adjust the Source ID.

71 71 Appendix A Checklist for a Successful Election Tasks to perform in advance of Election Day to insure success. Software vendors always like to say that you can prepare for an election in a matter of hours, not weeks or months. Sounds good, but in reality, an election is a big deal and no matter how you cut it, it takes a tremendous amount of time and station resources both in advance and on election night. It may only take a few hours to get races configured into an election system, but it took you weeks to get that information. And not even the most skilled graphic artists will say they can whip up an entire election graphics package, including programming all CG templates, in just a few hours. While we have made it quick for you to set up races and enter results, we won t pretend that you pull it off in 24 hours. Our staff is intimately familiar with elections, having worked on them at both the national and local level, and in the United States and Canada. Collectively, our staff has more than a century s experience in elections, from both the news and technology side, including employees who worked for the software pioneer of election capture and display. This appendix provides you with a checklist of things to consider in planning your election coverage. Some of the points are specific to NewsTicker, but most apply generally to election-night coverage. At Least 60 Days Prior > Start working with your graphic artist on what your crawl, fullscreen or two-line displays will look like and begin developing templates now.

72 72 The sooner you work on them, the more you can be assured that your exact look will be done in time. When working with fullscreens, keep in mind the size of your crawl or two-line display so that they can appear simultaneously without a problem. Note that Newsroom Solutions Support will not be able to handle requests for custom election displays after October 15th for general elections and ten business days prior to a primary election. All displays requested after that time will be our standard working design or will incur extra charges. > Determine if you are going to use candidate pictures as part of your display. If you will, you need to assign an ID to each candidate. Start the process of gathering candidate photos or pulling file tape to capture head shots. > Identify what counties or parishes you ll be reporting data from and arrange for stringers or interns to call-in results. > Make sure you install the necessary phone lines, or that you have cell phone service at all locations where votes are being counted. If your stringers will be dialing-up into your election system to enter results, be sure you have appropriate firewall access. > If you re using manual data entry, identify enough people to enter the data quickly. Remember with NewsTicker everyone on the network can enter data. > Contact you local election officials and gather all race information. In addition to the candidate name, office, and jurisdiction, you ll need to know the number of precincts that will be voting on each race. For example, some counties only provide the total number of precincts for the entire county. If you re covering a race that only makes up a portion of the county, like a township race, you ll need to get that breakdown. Most importantly, you will need to know how the county will be reporting results on election night. Will they tell you race-byrace the number of precincts reporting for that particular race, or will they only provide you with the overall number of precincts reporting in the county. DO NOT just request a sample ballot from county elections officials. One sample ballot may not show all races in the county. You need to ask for a complete candidate list or sample ballots from each precinct. > If you will be using wire capturing from the AP, then you should provide a Y of your AP wire into the NewsTicker server to give plenty of time to work through serial port and cabling issues.

73 73 > If you are going to export election results to your website, be sure you are able to get the data out of NewsTicker in the format you desire, and that proper access is provided between the NewsTicker server and your web server. 30 Days Prior > Delete old election data from the system so that you can begin working with a clean slate. > Enter new race data, working with your news staff to include appropriate prompting information for talent. > Schedule training sessions for all vote entry personnel and stringers. (See Appendix C.) > Finalize the look of all graphical templates and audit those races that are using candidate pictures to be sure you have all of them. > Configure talent displays using tprompt on the exact PC, monitor, and distance away from the anchor desk you will be using on election night. A change in the monitor s resolution or location may affect the talent s ability to read the screen. Adjust fonts and color contrasts until the talent is satisfied. > Once the tprompt display has been finalized, step through all races while viewing the tprompt output on the production PC to be sure all of your prompting information will fit on the screen. You may need to abbreviate or condense your writing if it gets cut off. > Schedule a rehearsal for one week prior to the election. During this rehearsal, be sure to run the ticker and fullscreens, including tprompt. > Contact your wire service for a schedule of when test data will be fed and mark it on your calendar. You will want to have NewsTicker inspecting the wire during this time so that it will automatically create desired races. > If exporting to your website, view sample outputs to be sure the formatting and layout is correct, and that updates are successfully making it to your web server. > Deadline for NewsTicker support to make changes to format files or templates is ten business days prior to a primary election and October 15 for a general election. Any requests for new formats or templates will be filled with standard pre-tested formats and templates.

74 74 10 Days Prior > Run Audit Race Setup from the Configure menu and review the reports to check for proper race setup. > Test the wire update feature with the first available wire test data. Test with each scheduled wire test until you are certain that all of the races are updating correctly. Be sure to note values for both vote counts and precincts reporting. > Conduct training and practice session with producers, anchors, vote entry people, and stringers. Train anyone that will have access to an entry point and be certain that vote entry operators know how to correct errors. > Test all on-air displays with a variety of results to make sure they display properly, including race names, candidate names, and winner flags. Be certain to test with maximum likely vote counts. You can have the Elections module insert random test data through General Configurations. If changes are made to a template, check all races again with the new display format. 1 Day Prior > Run Audit Race Setup from the Configure menu again and review the reports to check for proper race setup. In particular, check for Active Notices in Audit Race Setup to resolve any last-minute issues. > Check all PCs for proper operation and access to NewsTicker. Note that NewsTicker automatically backs itself up each night onto Newsroom Solutions servers. If a disaster occurs now, we can restore your races. > DO NOT allow any changes to be made to the display templates. Election Day > Double check all fullscreens and crawls for proper display. In doing so, verify that your tprompt systems are functioning correctly. Remove any outdated tprompt IP addresses from General Configurations or fullscreens may take longer to display. > Double check the spelling of all race and candidate names and perform a final review of all talent prompt information for accuracy. > Run Audit Race Setup from the Configure menu for a final time

75 75 and review the reports to check for proper race setup. > Clear all test data no later than 30 minutes before the polls close. Advise all personnel not to enter any further test data. > If exporting to your website, make the elections page live by linking it in after all vote counts have been zeroed out. > Confirm the wire service data capture is turned on 15 minutes before the polls close. > As results are coming in, keep the Audit Race Setup screen open and check regularly for Active Notices in the event the wire service changes the spelling of a candidate s name and the wire capture association is broken.

76 76 Appendix B Website Export Details on formatting and sending election results to your website. Part of any successful election is providing results at your viewers fingertips through your website. NewsTicker makes this simple with an easy to modify pre-designed template. Newsroom Solutions support will help you configure the look to work within your design. Once set, NewsTicker Elections will automatically export results every couple of minutes to your website, allowing you to locally insert advertising and track visitors. Settings The following information is needed to setup the transfer to your website. Hostname This is the IP address or DNS name of the web server or other file server location. Username/Password The username and password to login to the designated host. Filename The physical name of the generated HTML file, such as index.html or results.htm. Directory The absolute or relative directory to place the file.

77 Sample Template As part of NewsTicker Elections, the following template is provided for web results. The 3D graphs are automatically generated from NewsTicker and uploaded to your server. 77

78 78 If you wish to add HTML code before or after the above template, such as your own logos and navigation, then it should be provided in an to Newsroom Solutions support. The results themselves are formatted using Cascading Style Sheets. Virtually every aspect can be reformatted by providing modifications to the following styles..racename {color: #FFFFFF; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; background-color: #446196;}.prereporting {color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11px; background-color: #B4C5E5;}.winflag {color: #FFFFFF; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; background-color: #8C0000;}.canname {color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 12px; background-color: #E1E4EA;}.votetotal {color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 12px; background-color: #E1E4EA;}.pcttotal {color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica; font-size: 12px; background-color: #E1E4EA;} If you require a complete modification to the above template, then you must provide ample lead-time for the custom web work and a functional sample for implementation. If given enough time, Newsroom Solutions support will implement a single round of your custom design at no extra charge. Further modifications and rush charges may apply. An XML version is available, upon request.

79 79 Appendix C Sample How To for Data Entry Personnel A single-page reference sheet for data entry personnel to follow on election night. On the next page are quick steps for entering results on election night. You can customize and duplicate it for all of your data entry personnel to use as reference. The sample provided is designed for somebody doing virtual precinct entry where all races have been assigned to a precinct (county) and the data entry person enters the name of the county and all races for that county appear. You may wish to create your own sheet based on your particular setup. Note that it can also double as a timesheet. In advance, you can write their name on the bottom of the sheet and their assignments (if any) in section three. Then, when they arrive, hand them their sheet and enter the current time in the Start section. When they are done for the evening, they return the sheet to you and you enter the current time in the End section. You can then use this information to pay them.

80 80 Quick Steps for Entering Results 1 In Internet Explorer, go to:. Username: Password: 2 Click Elections, then Edit Results. 3 In the box, enter one of the following corresponding to the county you are entering results for, and press Enter (or click Edit): (Type county names and IDs below.) 4 Enter the number of precincts currently reporting in the first box, and the total number of precincts in the second box. You can use the Tab key to move to the next field. 5 For each of the candidates listed, enter their vote totals. Commas are not necessary and you can use the Tab key to move to the next field. 6 If the Next Race button is present, click it and repeat steps 4 and 5 for the next race presented. Otherwise, click the Save button and begin with step 3 for the next county that calls. You may also click Prev Race to go back to an earlier race in the list, or press Show All for a list of all races needed from the county that is calling. Name: Start: End: