Ok, this is just crazy. Thanks to Russell for querying this information.
On 3/27/07, Russell McOrmond <
[hidden email]> wrote:
> BTW: Those who wanted to investigate possible inconsistencies in the
> data between government agencies may want to look at the additional
> PCFRF query results I added to
>
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1607#comment-1667>
> I provide examples of postal codes that map to multiple electoral
> district. There are 2 of these that have 6 matches, 11 that have 5
> matches, and I provide a sample of 10 that have between 2 and 4 matches.
I manually tested all the postal codes listed as having 6 and 5
ridings on the elections.ca website. The first postal code was the
only one to return the message:
"Your postal code identified more than one electoral district. Please
enter your address below."
I automated lookups against the parl.gc.ca website. This one returns
two results instead of the expected five:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/house/PostalCode.asp?Language=E&txtPostalCode=H2S3R5(Because my scraper looks for email addresses, I only get one result.
I'll try to fix that this week-end. sigh.)
This postal code got 1 result instead of 3:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/house/PostalCode.asp?Language=E&txtPostalCode=B0J2L0So that's two discrepancies out of 42. Postal codes change every
month, so the parl.gc.ca results may actually be more accurate than
the last database available for sale.
In any case, there are a couple dozens postal codes for which
parl.gc.ca and elections.ca return different results. With 789027
postal codes associated with a single MP, and 5831 associated with two
or more, that's almost three-quarters of one percent error rate.
I think it's fair to say something is broken when the mechanism for
determining the identity of your elected representative has that kind
of error rate.
-Daniel.
Locked
