[EL] using polling place finders

[Doug Hess]

Hi. My students are researching distances between dorms and polling places.
However, only a few states seem to have polling place finders (using either
the government or databases compiled at nonprofit websites) that work for
general addresses. By that I mean that many states want you to enter your
name or other information to see where a certain person lives and where
their polling place is. Obviously this restricts the states where we can
examine distances between two points, as we can get dorm addresses (point
A) but not the associated polling place (point B).

Oddly, even on polling place locator websites like WI (link:
https://vpa.wi.gov/AddressSearchScreen.aspx) if you type in the address for
a huge dormitory, you get nothing. Surely somebody is registered at a dorm
address of over a 1,000 students, and used their dorm street address. No?

In any event, if people know of other mapping tools or datasets of polling
places that allow for research like this, let me know. So far the majority
of states require a log in or a name or that your address produce a
registration file first. (Some larger counties have their own systems, but
I haven't explored that yet.

Doug Hess

The information contained in this email is confidential and may contain
proprietary information. It is meant solely for the intended recipient(s).
Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not the
intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action
taken or omitted in reliance on this is prohibited and may be unlawful.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120404/20282256/attachment.html>