Council's Election Printing Ahead Of Schedule

Sunderland City Council in the UK has delivered a vote of confidence in its Xerox equipment after its in-house printing department helped deliver its postal ballots ahead of schedule.

Sunderland City Council in the UK has delivered a vote of confidence in its Xerox equipment after its in-house printing department helped deliver its postal ballots ahead of schedule for this year's local and European elections.

Sunderland City Council produced more than 250,000 ballot papers for 25 wards across the city this year, along with more than 50,000 ballot papers for other authorities.

The City of Sunderland Council Printing Service runs a full range of Xerox equipment, including an entry-level Xerox Docuprint 90, a Xerox DocuTech 6180 Production Publisher, a Xerox Docuprint 180MX Enterprise Printing System, a Xerox Docucolor 2045 and Xerox Docucolor 2060 sheet-fed digital colour press.

All are networked and utilise Digipath Professional Production Software, and Variable-data Intelligent PostScript Printware (VIPP), together with Lytrod Desktop Designer.

All integrated Xerox Freeflow components ensure that all machines can handle the data sets needed and coordinate the large amounts of information held on the voter rolls.

The VIPP software is an open-language variable information system designed by Xerox for use with all Xerox devices that both maximises the network performance and delivers fully personalised documents in full colour or monochrome, claimed Xerox.

The Lytrod software makes the most of the VIPP technology by delivering a graphical user interface, eliminating all necessary programming, and providing a quick and efficient way to developing highly personalised communications in the shortest time, said the company.

City of Sunderland print room manager John Brien said: "The Xerox equipment has proved to be a great asset in terms of handling variable data information and providing the consistency and quality of print that we need.

The integrity of the printed item was also vitally important in a job of this nature.

An electronic check was needed to ensure that the right form was inserted into the correct envelope.

We were able to do this with a combination of the VIPP variable data software, and the Lytrod design interface." In total, five items had to be included in the ballot packs.

They included two ballot papers that were printed on one single sheet of paper - on the left hand side was one for the European Parliamentary election (white) while on the right hand side was the ballot for the Local Government elections (grey) - as well as a separate identity declaration form, an instruction sheet, and envelopes A and B.

Brien concluded: "Using the Xerox software and printers we maintained the integrity and security of the mailing, while hitting our targets for printing and distributing the ballots well ahead of schedule." Sunderland was one of the pioneers of postal ballots last year, which saw a significant increase in voting figures, prompting a further rollout for the latest elections.

In a major shake-up in the voting system, it is the first time that voters in the north of the UK have been able to exclusively use postal votes rather than attending polling stations.

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