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 along nonvisible features, the State staff selected a nearby visible feature that would approximate the location of the original voting district line. By June 1986, 95 percent of all BBSP work was complete. By early 1987, the remaining work, mostly for areas not having 7.5 minute map coverage, concluded successfully. The Census Bureau then inserted the visible features identified by the States into the TIGER data base, assigning special must-hold flags to ensure that it would hold these features as 1990 census block boundaries. (However, due to operational and technical considerations, the Census Bureau was unable to hold all railroads as census block boundaries.)

Participants in the 1980 Election Precinct Program recommended that the States be able to submit their 1990 VTD plans on block-numbered maps produced by the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau tested its ability to implement this recommendation and determine overall mapping requirements for the VTD program during the 1986 Test Census, held in central Los Angeles County, CA. This test generally proved successful. In response to Test Census recommendations, the Census Bureau adjusted its mapping specifications to limit the total number of map sheets required while ensuring that both VTD names and codes would be included on the maps.

The 1988 Dress Rehearsal, held in portions of central Missouri and eastern Washington State, provided another opportunity to test the procedures and operations to be used for defining VTDs. The Census Bureau worked with the Missouri Office of Administration to ensure that 57 VTDs in Boone County were properly inserted into the TIGER data base and that the VTDs were revised to account for changes in governmental unit boundaries reported in the 1988 Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS). Most of this preparatory work had been completed by mid-1987.

In early 1989, the Census Bureau began to deliver the data and geographic products from the Dress Rehearsal to serve as prototypes for the release of Voting Districts14-13