* *** EMAIL_PROBLEMS_AND_SOLUTIONS TXT - 23 Sep 2021 16:33:17 - JKNAUTH Thoughts on Some Email Problems -- Possible Solutions ======== == ==== ===== ======== == ======== ========= Background ---------- For the 11/3/20 election, 7 out of the 21 Precinct Officials I had to contact did not get my initial Chief Judge emails because the emails were spam filtered. So far it has been much better this year -- only four people did not respond to my email after a couple of days, so I had to phone them. Three had received my email, but just had not gotten around to replying although I had asked for an immediate response. One other was out of town without good email access; in fact I later realized I had misspelled her email address, but Gmail had not objected to my error. On the other hand, one other person did get *my* email, but apparently did not get his assignment email from the *BOE* (spam filtered?); he didn't even know he had been designated a Precinct Official for this election. Post Warnings on the Precinct Officials Website ---- -------- -- --- -------- --------- ------- Maybe all that can be done at this point is to put a prominent warning on http://www.wakeprecinctofficials.com/ with the following: * Emphasize that Precinct Officials should reply quickly to their Chief Judge's initial contact email to the Precinct Official. * Everyone should ensure the email address they registered with the BOE is still the proper address for BOE work. Ditto for registered phone numbers. People sometimes change their contact information and forget to update the BOE. * Each Precinct Official should frequently, probably daily, check if any messages had been received at the email address that person had registered with the BOE. The check should include inspection of the spam/junk folder(s) associated with that email address. Depending on the system used, those folders may be on the local device (PC, tablet, etc.), or may be on the email server, or may be on both, with each containing different filtered emails. * Start this checking as soon as the Precinct Official receives their precinct assignment notification from the BOE. * Each Precinct Official should whitelist the email address of their Chief Judge as soon as they learn that address. ("Whitelisting" the CJ's email address means configuring the receiver's email system so the CJ's email address is never spam filtered.) Usually just putting the CJ's address in the receiver's address book is adequate, but sometimes more is required. Needless to say, the Officials must have also whitelisted the BOE's elections@wakegov.com address. * Chief Judges need to perform similar email checking and whitelisting. They must reliably receive any emails from the BOE, from their Coordinator, and from Precinct Officials assigned to them. Assignments change frequently; be sure to whitelist new Precinct Officials as soon as they are assigned. Problem 1: Do people know how to check all their spam/junk folders? This is system dependent. Problem 2: Do people know how to whitelist an email address? This is system dependent. Problem 3: How can POs learn their CJ's email address so they can whitelist it? Problem 4: If assignment notifications to Precinct Officials are done only by emails from the BOE, such emails might be missed by people who don't frequently monitor the address they had registered with the BOE or don't check the associated spam/junk folders. Possible Additional Actions -------- ---------- ------- 1) Do the assignment notifications via snailmail as well as email, at least for the first set of notifications. Doesn't the BOE mail a hardcopy Manual and Quick Guides to every Official very early in the process? If so, put the above directions in that package. Unfortunately this snailmail suggestion is too late for the 11/2/21 election, but it seems the simplest solution and would allow you to include detailed instructions about how to check spam/junk folders, do whitelisting, etc. Assuming precinct assignments had been determined at that point, you could even include the CJ's email address in the package so it could be whitelisted immediately by the PO. 2) A writeup could be put on http://www.wakeprecinctofficials.com/ with the detailed instructions about how to check spam/junk folders and how to whitelist email addresses. 3) The BOE should do a followup phone call if a PO has not signed up for classes after a reasonable time. (You probably already do this.) Find out if the assignment notification had been received. If not, find out what happened. Did the PO just choose to drop out and not tell anyone, or was there some problem receiving the notification? Understanding the failure reasons might help you find how to make notifications more reliable. 4) Maybe WeLearn could be used for some of this notification, e.g., for CJ email addresses. WeLearn requires a Precinct Official password to get in, so presumably its information is well protected and is isolated on a per Official basis. Precinct assignments (at least most of them) should be known by the time people start signing up for classes. Could there be a section for each PO that lists their current CJ's name and email address? If the PO's assigned precinct is later changed and for some reason the BOE does not want to include the new CJ's contact information in the "You've been reassigned." notification, that notification could just say "Go check your WeLearn data and if a Chief Judge email address is listed, whitelist that address." 5) A mention of all this could have been part of the "Coffee with Nick" episodes. Maybe you can do that before the next election. Some Questions and Comments ---- --------- --- -------- 1) Do POs usually register their main email address with the BOE? Or might they instead provide a secondary address (e.g., from Gmail or AOL) that they check much less frequently than their main address, especially at the start of the election cycle? They might even ignore the secondary address's spam/junk folders completely for such a seldomly used address. 2) What is the time gap between when assignment notifications are sent to POs and when the CJs are sent their first roster? Should the POs start checking for a CJ email immediately after the assignment notification is received (my preference), or is the gap so large that they can wait a while? Days? A week or more? (Not good.) When the CJs get their rosters, they are told to immediately contact their POs on behalf of the BOE. This is often hard to do. When contact is eventually made (if ever), the CJ may find that a PO didn't even know they had been selected to be a Precinct Official (because the BOE assignment notification was overlooked or lost), or the CJ emails had not been read yet on a secondary or even main address, or the emails were sitting in an unchecked spam/junk folder, or the PO just decided not work this election and chose to ignore everything, including phone calls, not even notifying the BOE. I have seen all the above. Jeff