After the 2016 presid ential election, interest was generated in maintaining the security behind U.S. elections. Are people properly registered to vote, and are they t hen going to be allowed to do so? Are the votes tallied correctly?&nbs p;What role does the voting technology play? More significantly, are v otes being compromised?
\nTo answer these questions requires und erstanding the data involved in setting them up: contests on ballots, registered voters, and a ballot appropriate for each voting precinct.& nbsp;This turns out to be a nontrivial (and therefore interesting) data mod eling problem.
\nThere are several dimensions that will be disc ussed in this presentation:
\n\n Geography – In the United States, a county (or, in Louisiana, a paris h) consists of a complex overlapping structure of congressional distri cts, state legislative districts, state senatorial districts, county commis sioner districts, and others. \n Candidacies – Each position being contested in an election is related to a particular piece of geography. By convention, each of these geog raphic areas is contained in one state, and many are within one county. Som e, however, such as congressional district, may overlap multiple counties. Some positions, such as Senator and Presidential Elector, are for the entire state.\n Registration – Each voter must first register. This entails noth ing more than ‘e* provi ding name and residence address, plus the assertions that ‘e is an Am erican citizen, and will be age 21 by election day. Based on h’< a href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title="">+ address, the voter is assign ed to a precinct. The location of that precinct determines the positions th at the voter can vote for.\n Ballot – Because of the interlocking nature of the various candidacy districts, producing a ballot for one precinct is tricky. The collecti on of positions for each precinct will be unique to that precinct.\n\nGe ographic software can take care of the intricate logic, but it is still inc umbent on each citizen (or at least each election judge) to understand how that all works. Ultimately, it will be for you, the voter, to make sur e that the ballot is correct.
\nIn 2018, Dave Hay was an Election Jud ge for a precinct in Houston, Texas. The relationships among these dimensio ns inspired him to produce this model. While it was based on Harris Co unty, Texas, it is reasonable to believe it applies to any county in the U. S.
\n\n DTSTART:20200326T083000 SUMMARY:Geography, Registration, and Ballots: Data Model for an Election DTEND:20200326T092959 LOCATION: See Description END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR