Summary of What to Do

You will be working with four files, one for each of the years for which we have voting data (i.e., 1984, 1986, 1988, and 1990). These files are called mathxxyy.xls, where xx is the state's two-letter abbreviation and yy is the year.

1. First, make sure there are no counties for which exceptions must be made. See the section on how to make exceptions. If there are exception counties, make a list of all such counties for that state (in one year's file is sufficient), and notify me so that the state can be reprocessed before you continue.
2. Next, do a survey of the computer matching. If a large number of precincts have very, very bad matches, report to headquarters at once! What constitutes a consequential bad match is a match of one name to a precinct when a much better name existed to match on, and when the unused match has a different MCD Group number than the matched precinct.
3. Now you can proceed down the list, assigning MCD Group numbers as you go. Copy the MCD Group number from the correct Census precinct name and paste it into the MCDGRP field for the as-yet-unmatched precinct name. See the section on rules that you should follow in this process. You can skip over precincts that are simply units for tabulating absentee or other ballots without a geographical home base. See the absentee item below.
4. Save your work in the same file.
5. Do all four years as above.
6. Make a record of your major decisions and problems in math__xx.log. There is no need to record every match you made -- that is obvious in the files you saved. Also, don't record information about precinct spelling differences. Rather, you should note important patterns or things that would not be obvious to someone else, things that you yourself won't remember in a month or two.
7.   Also in the log file you should record all distinct text strings in the precinct name field that you think identify absentee or other unusable precincts. For example, 'ABSENTEE PRECINCT', 'CHALLENGE BALLOTS', 'CURBSIDE TOTAL', 'BARRIER FREE', 'ABS.', and '(AV)' have all fallen under this rubric for certain states. All precincts with any occurrence of these strings will be dropped, so just make sure to not list any strings that occur in any valid PLVD precinct.

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