Data and Research Resources: PVSWiki

Data and Research Resources

There are a growing amount of resources available on the internet that will make your life easier if you're willing to take the time out to look for them. Before it hits crunch-time, do some searching on Google, search around the following websites for new material, and look at what those websites link to. If you come across something worthwhile, please add it to this list.

Subscriptions

AP Style Book

Candidates, Elections, Party-Changes, and Resignations/Vacancies

Politics1
The Green Papers
Our Campaigns' Calendar
National Association of Secretaries of State
Election Line
Ballotpedia
Inside Gov
voter guides on ballot measures: http://web1.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Features_of_official_voter_guides,_compared_by_state

Ballot Access News
Open Elections- official election results/"Vote Totals"

Terms of Office/Term End Dates

State-By-State Information

Local Information

opencivicdata.org
National Association of Counties (NACO)
National League of Cities (NLC)
Association of Towns and Townships (NATaT)
US Census' Census of Government
County Executives of America
City-Data
International City/County Management Association (ICMA)
Democracy Map
ballotpedia

Voter Information

Can I Vote?
Polling Hours
Voting Information Project
NOI/Ballot Information Project
Voter Registration Tools: Rock the Vote

Presidential Content

Legislative Content

Biographical Content

race and ethnicity

Archival Content from the Web

Ratings Directories

Factcheckers

Independent Nonpartisan Groups:

Major news source with structured content:

Washington Post Fact Checker

Other cited, major news sources with less-structured fact-checking content:

New York Times' Check Point (at least in 2008)
AP's Fact Check (primarily by Calvin Woodward)- also spinmeter examining rhetoric and promises, promises for campaign promises

state-level fact checkers:

partisan fact checkers:

left-leaning: MediaMatters
right leaning: News-Busters (can't find?)

Evaluating Candidates on other Dimensions

Rating candidates on other dimensions

Taxpayers for Common Sens- earmarks
Washington Watch- costs of bills
Citizens Against Government Waste- pork
CREW- ethics
Oh My Gov- social and media impact
Sunlight's datasets (also see APIs)- various dimensions

Influence in Politics (Campaign Finance, Special Interest Groups, Ratings)

Vote Reports
Little Sis
On the Issues
VIS
Open Secrets
MapLight
Open Congress
fec.gov
OpenGovernment
FollowTheMoney
Influence Explorer
Other Sunlight Foundation Projects
That's My Congress- Caucuses

Issues

Public Agenda

Location to District Matching

Aristotle (formerly Legislative Demographic Services)
Azavea - Cicero API - as of 2013 "We had 2.2m requests to /search last year, and at that cast, it would be over Aristotle's price of $8k. However, they might have some really fine grained results if that's what we're looking for. But so might Aristotle..." as of 2014 "Doesn't appear Azavea has redistricting data(current districts only) available." -Mike Shultz
Maponics
Core Logic , More Core Logic
Google's Civic API -as of 2014 "it's garbage" -Mike Shultz
DemocracyMap - as of 2013 "still has a long way to go" -Mike Shultz
http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Boundaries
Know Who - as of 2013 "I would not recommend KnowWho unless they're super cheap"
usgeocoder- as of 2014 does not have redistricting data
OpenStates- as of 2014 is officials only, so no redistricting data. Nor is there an address/zip lookup.

Partnerships

Sites We Partner With

Site to Partner with in future?:

Overseas Vote Foundation

Similar Sites to Get Inspired By

APIs

Advocacy

K-12 Civics Education

http://www.kidsvotingusa.org/
http://www.mobilize.org/index.php?tray=content&tid=top396&cid=8
http://www.kidsvotingusa.org/page9623.cfm
http://www.arsalyn.org/Display.asp?Page=democracyinaction
http://www.arsalyn.org/display.asp?page=specialprojects#vote
http://www.easehistory.org/index2.html
http://www.civicyouth.org/
http://www.kidsvotingusa.org/page9664.cfm
http://www.kidsvotingusa.org/page9597.cfm

Purely link-providing sites

and, of course resources available on our own site

PVSWiki : Resources