AAUW Brevard is making the templates they used for their voter guide available for others to use. [You can find their voter guide at aauwbrevardnc.org/voterguide.html.]
These templates are Microsoft Word “forms” that allow fixed answers and enforce word counts on the answers.
There are some questions specific to the Brevard districts that you’ll want to change before you use them. To do that,
- Download the template and open it in Microsoft Word.
Two templates are provided: NC House and Senate races; US Congressional races - Then go to the Tools menu and select Unprotect document. You’ll then be able to make changes to the questions and the explanatory text.
- If you need to add new questions, insert places for the candidates to add their answers using the Forms toolbar (or it may be easier just to copy a similar question and all its answers, paste it into a new area and modify the text).
- When you’re done modifying the file, go back to the Tools menu, select Protect Document and then click the Forms option. Enter a password if you want to be sure your text and other options are not changed.
- At that point, you can e-mail the Word file to the candidates and let them know where to return it.
- Since they’ll do the typing and the sotware enforces word counts it should be a straightforward process to copy their answers into a form that you can distribute.
If you’d like to make your results available from the AAUW NC web site, please contact Nancy. If you do use this system, please post a comment here or contact the Brevard branch to let them know how you’ve used their work.
This project was partially funded by an AAUW NC mini-grant.