Precinct voting results for president
I’ve gotten a couple of requests for the raw data we used in putting together the maps for last weekend’s story on Oklahoma voting by precinct for president.
I got the data from the state Election Board as part of its massive file detailing election results by precinct for all state races. You can download the presidential part of the data as an Excel spreadsheet here. (650k file) Our searchable database is here.
More Oklahoma maps in PDF format:
Also, if you’re curious about a little different way to present the precinct information, I created a “purple” map here. This map blends the colors between blue and red depending on how Democratic or Republican a precinct voted.
It’s an idea borrowed from a Princeton University professor, Robert Vanderbei, who did something similar for the 2004 presidential election. He’s also done some more work for the 2008 election. Along the same lines, a University of Michigan professor created some interesting maps using a variety of techniques.
–Paul
The perfect cure for Election coverage withdrawals
What’s a political junkie to do now that the election is finally over?
Well, how about checking out this super-massive widget machine from phone company Sprint. Just open your browser to its fullest extent and bask in the data–everything to the number of bicycles and cars being built to top YouTube videos and headlines from Fox Sports.
And my favorite–a mini version of the classic video game Pong.
–Paul
Gremlins in the Ethics Commission system?
The latest campaign finance reports filed last week for Oklahoma legislative candidates had some surprises, but none was bigger than the more than $2 million reported by state Rep. T.W. Shannon, R-Lawton.
For some reason, a bug in the state’s electronic filing system inadvertently pumped a ton of money into Shannon’s campaign reports online. (Since 2006, all candidates have to file their campaign reports electronically if they raise or spend more than $20,000.)
Turns out it was a surprise to Shannon, too. The Lawton newspaper had a short item on Thursday about his latest report.
Officials at the state Ethics Commission said they were aware of the problem and have been trying to get the commission’s vendor, OK.gov, to get the glitch fixed. OK.gov is a subsidiary of Kansas-based NIC Inc.
“It’s a bump in the system that’s been out there for a while,” said Charles Knight, the Ethic Commission’s information systems network administrator.
You can see the original pre-election report for Shannon here, complete with the error.
By Friday afternoon, officials had corrected the filing, which you can see here.
–Paul
