Success! The Tenth Annual GeoElections User’s Conference

Get ready, get set, and wait for the moment. The major topic that dominated the conference was the schedule of activities that will impact the elections office related to redistricting. Catherine Clark McCully, Chief of US Census Redistricting Data Office spoke about the release of the P.L. 94-171 TIGER/Line Shape Files and fielded questions related to Census operations and redistricting. Scott Miller, GIS/Tabulation Supervisor for the Clay County, FL Office of the Supervisor of Elections, provided a time line of elections activities commencing with the 2012 Presidential election listing the events and tasks back to November 2011.

With the first volley loaded below, our elections officials are now off to the tasks required to incorporate the numerous 2012 changes to our legislative districts both state and local into their voter registration systems:

• April 30, 2012: U.S. Department of Justice OKs State House, Senate, and Congressional plans
• June 4 - 8, 2012: Qualifying for state and federal offices
• August 14, 2012: Primary election (approximately June 24, VBM ballots must be postmarked)
• November 6, 2012: General election

The general consensus of the attendees agreed a GeoElections® project should be created at the earliest, enhanced, and synchronized with the respective VR database and put into use allowing the user to retire their 2000 project. They should work with the product of the legislative redistricting effort once released for public review, develop alternative plans, and be prepared to implement upon approval from DOJ.

WebElections® With Interactive Maps Is Enhanced for GeoElections®

ICW has bundled their next generation of election night reporting into WebElections®. Report your precinct level results through interactive maps published to the web with user controls. Additional reports both scrolling and static are included by race or issue with WebElections® election night reporting. Precincts are shaded reporting who won by precinct. Users can select colors, zoom, pan, search, and print and much more with new controls.

Single precinct results can be displayed by clicking the precinct of interest and the results are displayed on the right.

For smaller races only the precincts that are eligible display the results with all of the same controls and ability to point and click at an individual precinct to see the results for all of the candidates in the contest. The user can access a scrolling page with progress bars helping to make the results more useful with visualization. The user can control the speed at which the page scrolls or pause the page to focus on a contest.

WebElections® is easy to use for both the staff setting the system up for election night and the people watching the results as they are posted. Colors, fonts, titles, special messages, and more are controlled by your staff. Watch for a version of WebElections® that will work with counties who do not have GeoElections® but do have maps from other GIS sources that can be used with WebElections®.