VR content can vary by election date (is election specific)

[carl3]

Organization Name: Carl Hage

Organization Type: 4

Document: VoterRecordsInterchange

Reference: 3.1.6.18 The VoterRegistration Element

Comment: There may be 2 pending elections (e.g. LA has one in October & November),
and the second election might require a new precinct split, e.g. for a proposed district formation
or transfer. The precinct assignment for the first election might be different than for the second.

During redistricting, the district assignments may change. A current and upcoming election might
have different congressional districts, for example.

A voter might move after registration closes for one election but before closing for a subsequent
election. The voter would go to the poll location for the former address in election 1 and poll
location for newly registered address for election 2.

Poll locations, precinct consolidation, and mail-ballot precinct status vary by election date. There
can be 2 upcoming elections within the election cycle where poll locations are required to be final.

Suggested Change: Add an <ElectionDate> element to <VoterRegistration>
in a retrieval request to select a particular election, and to qualify the effective date for data
returned in a response. (The response might give the effective election date to qualify the
response even if no specific date was selected.)

Alternative: Allow data for multiple upcoming elections or to distinguish election-specific content
by creating an <ElectionDate> element with multiple instances allowed to contain response
data qualified by each active upcoming (or past) election. (Using a single selected or reporting
date seems simpler.)

Note, it can be useful to report the scheduled future election dates for a voter, along with the list of districts.

[JDziurlaj]

Because we do not currently implement a records retrieval capability, the alternative change would be more feasible. However, I would be interested in seeing if VIP provides such functionality, and how it is implemented. I also worry that this may make implementation more difficult.