jungshadow
commented
5 years ago Ultimately, changing BallotTransmissionType into an array seems to be the most reasonable solution in the near term. Jurisdictions that have more granular transactions will only have a single value in the array, while jurisdictions that aggregate transaction data will have multiple values. This is really a discussion with the jurisdictions on how difficult is it to update database data, modify the EMS/VR database, and change administrative processes.
The certain datasets have a separate column for a date when a ballot is emailed, but, if a ballot was also mailed and/or faxed, there's no indicator for which ballot was successfully returned. While this will obfuscate the transaction, a possible solution for some of these issues (i.e. until there is an administrative process change to collect the information with greater granularity/specificity) will be to allow the BallotTransmissionType to be an array. A particular row could have this BallotTransmissionType value:
My vote is to not combine the transactions as it will be more difficult to break them back up later, but there is the additional issue of having transactions that may have been successful being attributed to a different transaction (e.g. the emailed ballot may have successfully been returned, but, since the return type is 'mail,' it is assumed to have been received in the same way it went out).