Election calendar builder: state dates to an office master calendar

• The Claude desktop app (Code tab) or the ChatGPT desktop app (Codex) and a folder called something like Office Master Calendar, on the C: drive, OneDrive, or an external drive.
• Nothing to download yourself for the state dates. The AI gets the Election Dates and Activities Calendar (PDF) (a PDF and an Excel file) from the Division’s Publications/Reports page. The Division’s Election Dates page has the key voter deadlines, and the Qualifying Information page has qualifying dates, if you want to cross-check.
• Your local deadlines, in a short Word or text file in the folder: what each one is, how many days before or after which event, and the statute, rule, or policy behind it. The state calendar already has the big statutory dates, like registration closing on the 29th day before each election (s. 97.055, F.S.).
• Last cycle’s master calendar (optional), if you keep one. Put it in the folder so the new one follows the same layout and keeps your local entries. See context is king.
• Local and municipal elections in your county. The state’s Local Elections Database lists elections counties have reported, by county and year.
• Excel and Outlook.

1. Make the folder and save your local deadlines file in it.
2. Open it in the app. Claude: Code tab → under the message box, choose Local → Open folder…. ChatGPT: open Codex, click Add new project (or press Ctrl+O), and pick the folder. Folder projects walks through it.
3. Say the first prompt. Speak it or type it. It downloads the calendar into the folder and builds the workbook.
4. Check every row. Open the PDF it downloaded next to the workbook. If you’ve built this calendar before, a date that’s off will stand out. For each row, compare the date and type your initials in “Verified by.” For the big deadlines (registration, vote-by-mail, early voting, canvassing, certification), have a second person check too.
5. Add your local deadlines with the second prompt. Count each one yourself on a calendar, then have your supervisor or attorney confirm the counting rule for anything you haven’t counted before.
6. Ask for the .ics file once the rows are initialed. If no rows have initials yet, it makes no file. That’s on purpose. Compare its event count with the number of verified rows.
7. Import it into Outlook (steps below). Look at a few events to make sure the dates landed on the right days.
8. Add internal items by hand in Outlook, after the AI step.
9. When a date changes, fix it in the workbook first, then in Outlook. The workbook is your master copy.

Import the .ics file into Outlook

An .ics file is a standard calendar file that Outlook, Google Calendar, and Apple Calendar can all open. Importing makes a one-time copy of the events. It won’t update later on its own. All-day events avoid most time zone problems. If you add times, check that they show correctly in Outlook, especially in counties on Central time.

Classic Outlook for Windows:

1. Go to File, then Open & Export, then Import/Export.
2. Choose Import an iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file (.vcs) and select Next.
3. Find your .ics file in the project folder, select it, and select OK.
4. Choose Open as New. The events go into a separate calendar that shows up under “Other Calendars.” That makes it easy to check, share, or delete as a group.

New Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web:

1. Open Calendar and select Add calendar.
2. Choose Upload from file, then Browse, and pick your .ics file.
3. Choose which calendar to put the events in, then select Import.

One run of the first prompt, for a made-up Sample County.

Open the full version(opens the full version, PDF, 9 pages, 659 KB)

Open the master calendar (PDF, 9 pages, 659 KB)Excel workbook (Excel, 37 KB)

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files download to your phone; the PDF opens first. File names end in -DRAFT because AI output is a draft until a person checks it. Web addresses shown in these samples are made-up and will not open.

• Next cycle, keep the folder. Say: “Download the new calendar, compare it with last cycle’s in this folder, and build the new workbook.” Then check every row again.
• Roll it into your project plan. Election project template rollover shows how to load dates like these into a task list for the whole office.
• Public-facing dates. For a voter-facing version, keep only the voter deadlines and use them for your election content calendar.
• Meeting notices. Canvassing board meetings have their own notice rules. See canvassing board meeting notices.

About the measured time: “AI’s part” is how long the AI took, start to finish, in a test run of these prompts on September 27, 2026. It works on its own while you do something else. “By hand” and “With AI” are estimates of your own time.

In a test run, the AI took about 1 hour 15 minutes to download the calendar and build the workbook and the .ics file, while the person did other work. Plan most of the hour on checking every date against the source, which you’d have to do anyway. The time you save is the retyping.

You know this work, so you’re the best person to check it. Open every file it made and read every page. If part of it is outside what you know, hand that part to someone who knows it. These are the spots that most often need a fix:

• Never trust a date the AI worked out. Every date in your final calendar should match the Division of Elections calendar, a statute, or a date your office decided, and someone’s initials should say they checked it.
• Check that it got the current calendar. The Publications/Reports page shows a date next to each file, and the state updates calendars during the cycle.
• Imported calendar events don’t update themselves. If a date changes, fix the workbook first, then replace the Outlook events. Don’t leave both versions sitting in Outlook.
• Dates can change after you build the calendar: special elections, emergency changes, or new laws. Florida law lets the Governor suspend or delay an election in an emergency (s. 101.733, F.S.).
• Local and municipal elections aren’t in the statewide calendar. Check the state’s Local Elections Database and your own agreements with cities.