Looking Ahead

Looking to the Future

GIS Addressing: As it relates to VISTA, the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is one example of taking advantage of the future today. When the GIS component is fully functional, street files will become a thing of the past. Administrators and users of VISTA will simply enter the registrant's address and it will verify that address against the records that AGRC (Automated Geographic Reference Center of the State of Utah) has and automatically precinct that registrant.

VISTA Local

Originally, VISTA Local was introduced as a read-only, static database that could be taken to any polling place. Its primary benefit was that poll workers could search for registered voters in a database that was updated daily.

How times have changed with regards to VISTA Local. With the adoption of early voting, trained poll workers are now able to record who has voted early in real-time at various polling places. As long as their computer is connected to the web service, their database will be updated. It will then update any other computer in the county that is using VISTA Local. Even if there isn't a connection, VISTA Local still records who has voted early at that particular polling place. As soon as a connection is established, their counties database will be updated with this information, as will all other machines with VISTA Local.

In short, when early voting is recorded at one polling place, these changes will be able to be seen by any other polling place that has VISTA Local. What is the benefit to this real-time documention? One of the primary benefits is that it allows you to protect against voters attempting to vote in more than one polling location and prosecute those that do.

This product was first used in the last election