3 ms·

That should appeal the the crowd here, but we've got the data up on our service that can be exported to many other formats, including KML. http://market.weogeo

That should appeal the the crowd here, but we've got the data up on our service that can be exported to many other formats, including KML. http://market.weogeo.com/?query=census&lat=37.20852&lon=-97.69416&zoom=3&layers=BT http://market.weogeo.com/?query=census&lat=37.20852&... It is always good though to see governments try and make using their data easier. Quite a shift...

5vforest 15y ago
Heh, thanks for the link, I had actually seen your site before but wasn't able to find it again. Not sure if I'm misunderstanding you, but I should make it clear that we're not a government-affiliated entity.
- cageyjames 15y ago
  Gotcha, might have been a little bit of me reading more into it. Awesome stuff still!
padobson 15y ago
How specific do you get with Voter precincts/districts? The census site has voter districts from 2000 and 2010, but some of those are changed every year. Any applications built to analyze elections data with map overlays require this data, and it's really hard to come up with some 250k voter districts from disparate sources.
- 5vforest 15y ago
  What kind of districts do you need? The CensusShapeConverter can easily be extended to grab any of the data from the Census, which you can browse a list of here: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.html http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.ht... And yeah, you're on point about redistricting being a complete f'ing headache. Do you know if there's any centralized government source for maps of redistricted precincts?
  - padobson 15y ago
    Centralized? Not any that I know of. Secretaries of State seems to keep shapefiles of their districts, but its never all of them. Check those websites first. Local boards of elections are required to keep some record of the precinct maps on hand, but in many places aren't required to keep past ones - so it is in fact impossible to keep historical GIS data for some counties. There's also a lot of cases where records are simply kept as pencil or pen sketches, and no shapefiles exist. You want to build a majorly disruptive business? Provide brain-dead-simple GIS tools to boards of elections so they can re-draw their own district maps every year. Offer them to software for free, and then resell the data they create to people building campaign tools - or build your own campaign tools and sell those.

5vforest 15y ago

Heh, thanks for the link, I had actually seen your site before but wasn't able to find it again. Not sure if I'm misunderstanding you, but I should make it clear that we're not a government-affiliated entity.

cageyjames 15y ago
Gotcha, might have been a little bit of me reading more into it. Awesome stuff still!

padobson 15y ago

How specific do you get with Voter precincts/districts? The census site has voter districts from 2000 and 2010, but some of those are changed every year. Any applications built to analyze elections data with map overlays require this data, and it's really hard to come up with some 250k voter districts from disparate sources.

5vforest 15y ago
What kind of districts do you need? The CensusShapeConverter can easily be extended to grab any of the data from the Census, which you can browse a list of here: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.html http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.ht... And yeah, you're on point about redistricting being a complete f'ing headache. Do you know if there's any centralized government source for maps of redistricted precincts?
- padobson 15y ago
  Centralized? Not any that I know of. Secretaries of State seems to keep shapefiles of their districts, but its never all of them. Check those websites first. Local boards of elections are required to keep some record of the precinct maps on hand, but in many places aren't required to keep past ones - so it is in fact impossible to keep historical GIS data for some counties. There's also a lot of cases where records are simply kept as pencil or pen sketches, and no shapefiles exist. You want to build a majorly disruptive business? Provide brain-dead-simple GIS tools to boards of elections so they can re-draw their own district maps every year. Offer them to software for free, and then resell the data they create to people building campaign tools - or build your own campaign tools and sell those.