In Canada, the equivalent data is readily available from Elections Canada[0]. For Provincial elections, the story is a bit more mixed, but open by default is the general rule. Elections Alberta, for example, provides Excel files with poll-by-poll results[1] - it's not as easy to work with as Elections Canada's CSVs, but a little Python can get it into a more reasonable format.
[0] https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=rep/of...
[1] https://officialresults.elections.ab.ca/orResultsPGE.cfm?Eve...
In Canada it's nice and easy - federal elections are handled by Elections Canada, provincial elections are handled by each province's election authority, and we don't have cases where an election at one level results in a person at a higher level getting into office. Well, except for Alberta's senate elections which are somewhat farcical anyway (senators are appointed by the Prime Minister, so the results of this particular election are basically vague suggestions that the PM sometimes follows).
Some say this is a bug, but sounds more like a feature. If not, why wouldn't it be fixed when the technology exists? And why would people go over and above to have the current technology installed?
There should definitely be better attribution for this data.
[0] https://twitter.com/derekwillis/status/1361508657154961408
"Many" of the contributors (myself included) used primary sources for their data.
The one contributor that used OE data cited it and it was a small portion of their overall contributions.
The team at Dolthub is great and extremely accessible on their discord. These bounties seem like a great use case for their tech.
If you're into git and data (like I am) then these bounties are just awesome.
I agree this looks like a great enterprise.
Say I decided to skip work tomorrow and try to get a bounty, or at least part of one. What do I do?
They are launching another bounty later this week for college course data.
candidates, counties, precincts, vote_tallies
Without a set of open tables for voters and votes there is no chain of custody. Without a chain of custody this data is academic at best. There is no reliable way to verify it.
Those two tables remove privacy from the voter, and open up the risk of voter intimidation, but that doesn’t change the fact that this data, and any findings associated with it, are, at best, interesting.
The Bounty concept, on the other hand, is commendable.
Basically, it’s a decentralized mess.
Because the Constitution protects how States run their elections from federal restrictions/requirements.
The data created by bounties is free and open.
Our business model is to sell database licenses. We're a database start up. Bounties are the thing that shows off our capabilities the best, so we consider it marketing. It could be more in the future, ie. a two-sided marketplace, but right now, we're just getting started.
