Colorado House Roll Call Extraction

I need to read roll call votes from the Journal of the Colorado House of Representatives and make them available in a computer file. The attached PDF image file ("CO Journal [login to view URL]") shows a sample of the current state of the votes, which would be the input for this project. They are scanned directly from the original journals, but are images. The votes themselves appear as tables, with each member followed by his/her vote on the given bill (Y=Yes, N=No, -=Absent, E=Excused). What I need to do is read each of these votes (possibly with an OCR program) and record each member's vote in a text file. A yes should be recorded as 1, no should be recorded as 6, absent should be recorded as 0, and excused should be reported as 9. The two votes appearing on pages 1186-1187 should end up looking like the attached text file ("CO vote [login to view URL]"). Each vote matches up to a members' name (as seen in "CO members [login to view URL]"), which are in alphabetical order. For example, in Vote 1, Acquafresca voted "yes," so the first entry is a 1; Agler voted "no," so the third entry is a 6, etc. This is the desired output format, which will be hundreds of votes long in a typical session. In a previous effort along these lines, I OCR'd the PDF files, which often resulted in spelling errors. I then used a fault-tolerant Perl program (not designed by me) that utilized the string:approx subroutine to match up the actual members' names, with their names and votes as they appear in the text. This job will require extracting votes from at least ten sessions of the legislature, and each session has about 500 votes, so I would like the process as automated as possible. At this point, the input files are PDFs. However, I can OCR these PDFs. However, as you can see from "CO Journal [login to view URL]", they don't OCR particularly well, given the table format of the votes. I would accept this program if it could handle either PDF or the OCR'd text as its input. ## Deliverables 1) Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done. 2) Deliverables must be in ready-to-run condition, as follows (depending on the nature of the deliverables): a) For web sites or other server-side deliverables intended to only ever exist in one place in the Buyer's environment--Deliverables must be installed by the Seller in ready-to-run condition in the Buyer's environment. b) For all others including desktop software or software the buyer intends to distribute: A software installation package that will install the software in ready-to-run condition on the platform(s) specified in this bid request. 3) All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, GNU, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site per the coder's Seller Legal Agreement). ## Platform Windows XP.