Rebecca,
Creating the election result screens is fairly easy. Open the program
(Election.exe in the folder you downloaded and unzipped).
First thing, click SET UP AREAS from the main menu. A few counties have already
been entered as examples. You'll be creating election results by county (or
city if you have city elections) so you'll need to enter in your own countries
/cities. Just edit the ones already in there, use the << or >> buttons to
scroll through areas already entered. Use the new button to enter more areas.
Go back to the main menu. If you want create a crawl file for MasterPlay,
click PREFERENCES and use the SELECT button to select where that file should be
saved. You can change the name of the crawl file and the Station ID
Back to MAIN MENU and you should be ready to set up your different races.
I have a few examples already set up, so the easiest thing to do is click FIND
/ EDIT, then SHOW ALL. You'll see a list of races already entered as examples.
Click one of the presidential races and this will take you to the ENTER
CANDIDATES screen. If you click the LOCATION field, a menu shows all the
counties / cities you entered. Select the area you want for this record. The
CANDIDATES and VOTES fields are editable, change as you get results. The
PERCENT field is automatically calculated, however, you will need to enter the
PRECINCTS REPORTING field.
So let's say you have four counties your station covers. Once you have one
race record set up, let's use President - Vice-President for example, you can
simply use the DUPLICATE button to copy it for each county. Then you can change
the LOCATION to set the other counties. This makes it really easy to create
records for each race and county.
If you go back to the MAIN MENU and FIND / EDIT, SHOW ALL, you'll see some
example AMENDMENT / REFERENDUM entries. Click on one of those and you'll see
that you go to a different layout that's similar to the CANDIDATES screen. Edit
this as needed for any referendums / amendments on your ballot.
When you're at the ENTER REFERENDUM / AMENDMENT or CANDIDATES screen, you can
also take a look at what the graphic file you're creating will look like. Just
click the PREVIEW SCREEN and in a few seconds a file should open in your
default graphics program.
So when you have all your races / amendments / referendums set up and you start
getting your local results, you can start creating your graphics files for
display on your channel. Use FIND / EDIT and select the LOCATION and SEARCH by
county - or SHOW ALL. Select the race you want to enter data for and enter the
VOTES and PRECINCTS REPORTING. For other races, you can use the << or >>
buttons to scroll through your other records for that particular county.
When you're done entering data, go the MAIN MENU, FIND / EDIT and select a
county and SEARCH. You'll see the buttons at the top of the screen to CREATE
CRAWL, CREATE WEB RESULTS and CREATE SCREENS. Your graphic files will be
located in /election/graphics and /election/web_html/ in the Election.exe
program folder. Crawls will be located in /election/crawl/ unless you changed
the location in PREFERENCES.
Note that the program will only create screens for races that have VOTE data
entered, so blank screens will not be created. So always click CREATE SCREENS
when you've entered more data.
Your graphics files and crawl can be used in MasterPlay. I don't have
MasterPlay at this time, so I don't know the particulars of setting that up.
Please contact a MasterPlay user. Alternatively, you can use the free program
FastStone Image Viewer to play out a slide show of the graphics. Other
graphics programs that can do slide shows could work also.
Jon C. Moon
Ridgeline TV Channel 99
706-897-0872
www.ridgelinetv.net <http://www.ridgelinetv.net/>
On Nov 2, 2020, at 7:56 PM, Rebecca White <wrlwtv@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
i'd love to use this tomorrow night but I'm just not following how to use
this. I know your page has some instructions but is there any more detailed
or step by step instructions? or a video?
On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 6:00 PM Jon C. Moon <jonmoon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:jonmoon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
All,
An updated version of the free software I've written has been completed and
is ready for download. This software will allow you to create election
result graphics from your local election tallies as well as HTML files for
your website - and now a crawl file for those of you who are using MasterPlay.
You can read more about Election Results Creator and download it here:
www.ridgelinetv.net/info-spots/election/index.html
<http://www.ridgelinetv.net/info-spots/election/index.html>
In addition to now doing a crawl file, the update fixes several minor
problems and has been corrected to only create files for those records that
actually have votes entered. This means you can go ahead and have all your
areas and races set up in advance - you'll only need to enter in the vote
tallies as you get them on election night.
The software creates graphic screens like this:
www.ridgelinetv.net/info-spots/election/1.jpg
<http://www.ridgelinetv.net/info-spots/election/1.jpg> and can also create
election result pages for your website, like this:
www.ridgelinetv.net/info-spots/election/sample-results.html
<http://www.ridgelinetv.net/info-spots/election/sample-results.html>.
The graphic screens can be played out in MasterPlay or other programs.
If you don't have MasterPlay, you can use FastStone Image Viewer (FREE) to
play out a slideshow of the graphics in a loop. You could even create a
quick and easy sub-channel to display election results.
Please let me know if you have any problems. And thanks to those you have
provided ideas and suggestions.
Jon C. Moon
Ridgeline TV Channel 99
706-897-0872
www.ridgelinetv.net <http://www.ridgelinetv.net/>
