I wanted to introduce the http://votinginformationproject.org folks to the
http://democracymap.org folks.
The DemocracyMap effort is building a system to gather the official web
addresses for every government jurisdiction and over time information on as
many elected officials as possible for an open data set. Folks with
OpenPlans.org are leading efforts on the map to who represents me aspects as
well.
We could use help thinking about how to leverage ballot data about the
jurisdictions with elections this year, who won the election (or at least
uncontested races if results aren't available), etc.
My thought is that ... jurisdiction + office title + winning candidate name
will likely turn up in Google the page on the government website that
details how to contact that person in a few months. Also, since governments
aren't linking to elected officials Facebook profiles or pages (yet), it
would be nice to develop scripts identify likely links for crowd-sourcing
human eyes or other methods to then verify.
Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
On Dec 18, 2009 2:04 PM, "Aaron Strauss" <<email obscured>>
wrote:
> Happy Holiday to VIP Partners!
>
> I wanted to provide a quick rundown of our 2009 successes:
>
> 1) The Google-powered and -developed Virginia Gadget was awesome, as it
> provided polling locations and candidate information as well as other
useful
> deadline dates. If you didn't experience it first hand, you can check out
> screenshots<
http://www.votinginfoproject.org/blog/index.cfm/2009/12/15/The-Wonder-That-Was-The-2009-VIP-Gadget
>
> .
>
> 2) One of the best parts of the Gadget was that it was super easy to host
> anywhere. In addition to the State Board of Elections putting it up on
their
> homepage, over 50 other websites hosted the gadget including newspapers,
> campaigns, and organizations. The list is at the bottom of this email.
>
> 3) Google has graciously left open the API
> <
http://pollinglocation.apis.google.com/?q=9930+FAIRFAX+SQ+Fairfax+VA+22031
>for
> Virginia so that developers can continue to test run their apps in
> anticipation of 2010. We joined the "Great American
> Hackathon<
http://www.votinginfoproject.org/blog/index.cfm/2009/12/18/The-Voting-Information-Project-at-the-Great-American-Hackathon
>"
> to promote our development of a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB)
> Application. PDF's blog just gave us a nice shout
> out<http://personaldemocracy.com/node/15719> on
> this topic.
>
> We hope the FWAB application will help states comply with the MOVE Act,
> especially the first requirement under Section E of this
> summary<
http://www.nass.org/index.php?option=com_docman&;task=doc_download&;gid=816>
http://democracymap.org folks.
The DemocracyMap effort is building a system to gather the official web
addresses for every government jurisdiction and over time information on as
many elected officials as possible for an open data set. Folks with
OpenPlans.org are leading efforts on the map to who represents me aspects as
well.
We could use help thinking about how to leverage ballot data about the
jurisdictions with elections this year, who won the election (or at least
uncontested races if results aren't available), etc.
My thought is that ... jurisdiction + office title + winning candidate name
will likely turn up in Google the page on the government website that
details how to contact that person in a few months. Also, since governments
aren't linking to elected officials Facebook profiles or pages (yet), it
would be nice to develop scripts identify likely links for crowd-sourcing
human eyes or other methods to then verify.
Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
On Dec 18, 2009 2:04 PM, "Aaron Strauss" <<email obscured>>
wrote:
> Happy Holiday to VIP Partners!
>
> I wanted to provide a quick rundown of our 2009 successes:
>
> 1) The Google-powered and -developed Virginia Gadget was awesome, as it
> provided polling locations and candidate information as well as other
useful
> deadline dates. If you didn't experience it first hand, you can check out
> screenshots<
http://www.votinginfoproject.org/blog/index.cfm/2009/12/15/The-Wonder-That-Was-The-2009-VIP-Gadget
>
> .
>
> 2) One of the best parts of the Gadget was that it was super easy to host
> anywhere. In addition to the State Board of Elections putting it up on
their
> homepage, over 50 other websites hosted the gadget including newspapers,
> campaigns, and organizations. The list is at the bottom of this email.
>
> 3) Google has graciously left open the API
> <
http://pollinglocation.apis.google.com/?q=9930+FAIRFAX+SQ+Fairfax+VA+22031
>for
> Virginia so that developers can continue to test run their apps in
> anticipation of 2010. We joined the "Great American
> Hackathon<
http://www.votinginfoproject.org/blog/index.cfm/2009/12/18/The-Voting-Information-Project-at-the-Great-American-Hackathon
>"
> to promote our development of a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB)
> Application. PDF's blog just gave us a nice shout
> out<http://personaldemocracy.com/node/15719> on
> this topic.
>
> We hope the FWAB application will help states comply with the MOVE Act,
> especially the first requirement under Section E of this
> summary<
http://www.nass.org/index.php?option=com_docman&;task=doc_download&;gid=816>
