Add 2016 election precinct shapes for Montana

[nvkelso]

This state is in priority tier 1 (out of all US states) according to https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/82_2/04%20Stephanopoulos_McGhee_ART.pdf (via http://mike.teczno.com/notes/redistricting/measuring-efficiency-gap.html).

[nvkelso]

When researching & requesting data also ask for matching election results (presidential, congressional, state house, and state senate) in addition to the precinct shape data for 2016, and for earlier election years if available.

[nvkelso]

• https://github.com/openelections/openelections-data-mt/blob/master/2016/20161108__mt__general__precinct.csv

[eidietrich]

Hi there — I'm a Montana-based reporter with mapping/data wrangling skills, very interested in working on this but also new to open source projects. I have a script put together that parses precinct-level vote data from the Montana SOS office into the OpenElections data format (I used it to produce that .csv you linked to above at the OpenElections NICAR hackathon yesterday), and will look at rounding out the pure vote tallies when I get a free moment.

I could be pleasantly surprised, but I'm guessing that assembling precinct shapefiles for Montana will involve going county by county and end up pretty labor intensive, particularly in terms of getting at historical shifts. I'm happy to start plugging away at that, though, particularly if the state is considered a priority.

[nvkelso]

+1 for rounding out the vote tallies. I haven't taken a close look at those CSVs, do they include president, US congress, state house, state senate results?

If we need to do county-by-county for Montana, suggest we track that in this issue description by adding checkboxes for each county with their name and FIPS code. As PRs are added for each we can check the boxes off (and link the PR next to each check box).

Thanks for your help!

[nvkelso]

• Voting Districts, Gallatin County, Montana (Bozeman), 2011? - 201 count
  • http://geocommons.com/datasets?id=132695
  • http://www.gallatin.mt.gov/public_documents/gallatincomt_gis/Shapefiles/Voting_Precincts_11_11_2005.zip
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geoiq/gc_data/master/datasets/132695.geojson

[eidietrich]

Sounds great. It looks like there's structured data available for all those races (though I don't think I got the state house and senate races into the first-pass .csv I put together for OpenElections).

I'll put out some feelers to see if anyone in state government has a centralized list of precinct shapefiles by some miracle, and set up that checklist otherwise.

[eidietrich]

No luck on a centralized database from state government — here's our to-do list

• [ ] 30001 - Beaverhead County
• [ ] 30003 - Big Horn County
• [ ] 30005 - Blaine County
• [ ] 30007 - Broadwater County
• [ ] 30009 - Carbon County
• [ ] 30011 - Carter County
• [ ] 30013 - Cascade County
• [ ] 30015 - Chouteau County
• [ ] 30017 - Custer County
• [ ] 30019 - Daniels County
• [ ] 30021 - Dawson County
• [ ] 30023 - Deer Lodge County
• [ ] 30025 - Fallon County
• [ ] 30027 - Fergus County
• [ ] 30029 - Flathead County
• [ ] 30031 - Gallatin County
• [ ] 30033 - Garfield County
• [ ] 30035 - Glacier County
• [ ] 30037 - Golden Valley County
• [ ] 30039 - Granite County
• [ ] 30041 - Hill County
• [ ] 30043 - Jefferson County
• [ ] 30045 - Judith Basin County
• [ ] 30047 - Lake County
• [ ] 30049 - Lewis and Clark County
• [ ] 30051 - Liberty County
• [ ] 30053 - Lincoln County
• [ ] 30055 - McCone County
• [ ] 30057 - Madison County
• [ ] 30059 - Meagher County
• [ ] 30061 - Mineral County
• [ ] 30063 - Missoula County
• [ ] 30065 - Musselshell County
• [ ] 30067 - Park County
• [ ] 30069 - Petroleum County
• [ ] 30071 - Phillips County
• [ ] 30073 - Pondera County
• [ ] 30075 - Powder River County
• [ ] 30077 - Powell County
• [ ] 30079 - Prairie County
• [ ] 30081 - Ravalli County
• [ ] 30083 - Richland County
• [ ] 30085 - Roosevelt County
• [ ] 30087 - Rosebud County
• [ ] 30089 - Sanders County
• [ ] 30091 - Sheridan County
• [ ] 30093 - Silver Bow County
• [ ] 30095 - Stillwater County
• [ ] 30097 - Sweet Grass County
• [ ] 30099 - Teton County
• [ ] 30101 - Toole County
• [ ] 30103 - Treasure County
• [ ] 30105 - Valley County
• [ ] 30107 - Wheatland County
• [ ] 30109 - Wibaux County
• [ ] 30111 - Yellowstone County

[nvkelso]

I'm guessing Montana is like Wyoming and if we had the 2000 / 2010 VTD precincts from Census and updated a few major cities (er counties), we could get pretty far fast.

[nvkelso]

For the missing Montana counties from 2010 US Census we could get the precinct polling place address / lat / long and do the buffers on them like the initial Wisc. work.

[mvered]

#142 Includes 7 counties. 30013 - Cascade County 30029 - Flathead County 30031 - Gallatin County 30047 - Lake County 30049 - Lewis and Clark County 30063 - Missoula County 30111 - Yellowstone County

Edit: I believe all of these files show the same precincts as in 2016, except Lake County, which changed precinct boundaries this year.

[nvkelso]

Thanks! I’ll try and have a look this weekend.

On Jun 22, 2018, at 17:31, mvered [email protected] wrote:

#142 Includes 7 counties. 30013 - Cascade County 30029 - Flathead County 30031 - Gallatin County 30047 - Lake County 30049 - Lewis and Clark County 30063 - Missoula County 30111 - Yellowstone County

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[nvkelso]

The 7 Montana counties are added via #142 and https://github.com/nvkelso/election-geodata/pull/143.

[iandees]

I've been contacted by some Montana Democrat folks who are interested in collecting and digitizing data from hand-drawn records. I'm tracking this in issues on a fork of this repo here: https://github.com/iandees/election-geodata/issues

I asked for some help with digitization on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/iandees/status/1044724743981666304

[nvkelso]

@iandees I suspect census tracks could be used to aggregate up to whatever the hand drawn precinct maps show. Not that many people in the state and we already have most the populated counties in newer GIS formats :)

[nvkelso]

@iandees There's also a few Oregon counties missing, same deal.

[mvered]

A number of Montana counties have not yet digitized their precinct maps, mainly because the counties are so small they don't have GIS staff or resources to do this. There is a project underway by the state government to help these counties create digital maps with the goal of having this complete in time to include precinct boundaries in the 2020 Census voting district file.

You may be able to get GIS files from additional counties by contacting them directly. I have contact information for many of the GIS departments across the state, but haven't had the time to contact them all if someone else wants to take on this project. MT-GIS-Contacts.txt

[nvkelso]

Thanks for the tips, @mvered!

[pratheekrebala]

The project to digitize voting precincts seems to have been completed: https://mslservices.mt.gov/Geographic_Information/Data/DataList/datalist_Details.aspx?did={dbd29997-21d8-4af1-9d87-5c5134775995}

This is the data for 2020 Precincts.