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Thanks for the kind words. The data on officials is coming from Project Vote Smart (votesmart.org), but the challenge is relating it to the different map shape
by 5vforest 14y ago
Thanks for the kind words.
The data on officials is coming from Project Vote Smart (votesmart.org), but the challenge is relating it to the different map shapes. We built a tool to convert the U.S. Census shapes to KML format (available on github.com/GovHub), and we then matched Votesmart's governments to these shapefiles.
- jsabo 14y agoCan you go more into the challenges you had? From the few minutes I spent on your site I didn't see too much of a difference from what I can obtain from Project Vote Smart. That said, I do like your interface more. I volunteer at a local nonprofit occasionally (plug: fairness.org) and we have people spending a lot of time addressing postcards to state legislators going by the home addresses people list on the postcards they fill out at our events. Right now we mostly use Vote Smart or a state specific resource to find the person's representatives, but their address lookup can be pretty picky. This is unfortunate when a large portion of people who fill out postcards have horrible handwriting. A tool that can deal with misspelled street names and provide the information you and vote smart do would save us an incredible amount of time and frustration. I'll try your site out next time tackle the boxes of unsent cards.