Who Volunteers with OpenElections?

We’re lucky to have a number of dedicated volunteers who help us collect and publish election results. Here are some examples of the kinds of people who have contributed to our progress. Let us know if you can join them!

Data Gatherer

John contacts local election officials to request precinct-level results data to submit to our project, and emails us with the results. For example, he is responsible for the files in the Kansas sources repository and many others. If you like emailing or calling county clerks and asking for data, you can make a big contribution.

Data Enterer

Ursula isn’t a GitHub user, but she was able to help us by typing in Oregon and Ohio results into CSV files. If you can type and have some time and a good attention to detail, you can make a big contribution.

Preprocessor

Pete has helped convert result PDFs from Oregon into CSV files, sometimes through data entry or copying and pasting. He’s also helped build out these documentation pages! If you can type and are detail-oriented, you can make a big contribution.

Developer

Eric converted a database of election results from Washington into CSV files that fit our needs. Using command-line tools and Python, he wrote software that parsed the database dump and output files that we can load into our processing pipeline. If you know Python and are interested in automating complex processes, you can make a big contribution. (If you don’t know Python but are still interested, email us anyway.)

Volunteer FAQ

  • Do I have to know anything about elections?
    • No. It wouldn’t hurt, but we can teach you what you need to know.
  • Do I need to know how to use Python? Git?
    • No. You can still make valuable contributions to our project.
  • Can students help OpenElections?
    • Absolutely! Working on election data is a great way to learn about the process. Professors interested in working with our data or having students contribute: let’s talk.