[liberationtech] We should make it easy to crowdsource candidate data for every election in the US and across the world - everyvote.org

[Mitch Downey]

Here's a copy of the post we left on /r/opensource last night:
http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/w2bvw/we_should_crowdsource_candidate_data_for_every/


"It's 2012, half-way through, and I still can't find a website that lists
every candidate from every election (federal, state, county, local, etc.)
I'm eligible to vote in. This is something that could have been
crowdsourced years ago, but as far as I can tell it still doesn't exist...

If you'd like to help crowdsource and freely share this data, please
comment or send everyvoteorg a pm. It'd be cool to start ASAP in advance of
the US Nov 2012 elections. If you know any groups that are already
crowdsourcing county and local level election data (in the US or anywhere
else), we'd love to help however we can. If comprehensive (all govt levels)
candidate data sites already exist and we just don't know how to search,
plz let us know.

Here's a draft of a user interface we're working on that could convey this
data to users...

-After you create a profile and add your address (or otherwise manually
enter your voting districts), you would be presented with this Elections
page http://i.imgur.com/AJ7m6.png

-If you expanded the 'All my elections' tab, you'd see something like this
http://i.imgur.com/QyTLu.png where you could scroll left-to-right across
the top ## candidates for each of your districts' elections

-Click the person's name or picture to be taken to their full profile and
voting record

-Click the plus sign to the right of "Register by" to be given the option
to run for office yourself (and be added to the scrollbar) or to add a
different candidate to that election

-Click the red flag in upper-right portion of candidate profile to report
inaccuracies

-'Bill match' field would involve voting record and stance comparison data
(perhaps based on the research of an organization like Project Vote Smart (
www.votesmart.org)

Sorry the diagrams are crappy :0 if you'd like to help create a better
looking and actually functional opensource UI, or if you'd like to help
code a pure democracy platform, please comment or send a pm.

Check out www.everyvote.org if you'd like more info on the EV project.

Thanks, good citizens!"

If you like the idea and would like to get more people to help, please
retweet the following
https://twitter.com/everyvoteorg/status/220934666532814848 and/or let us
know at contactus at everyvote.org.

Cheers!

EveryVote.org Development Team
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