Re: elections canada

Posted by Cory Horner on Feb 02, 2007; 8:30pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/elections-canada-tp814p829.html

Daniel Haran wrote:
> Well, I first checked the copyright, which seems OK for non-profit use.
> Second, I tried to replace the postal code parameter in the URL, but
> no dice. Non-geek translation: they make it difficult to check
> different postal codes. Since no list that I know is public domain,
> you'd have to more or less try each one to find the 500,000+ that are
> valid. Could take a while.
>
> d.
>  
Hey folks,

I'd like to move howdtheyvote/quivotequoi in this direction too.  Since
we're already becoming a storing house for political information, why
stop at votes?

In the past i've aggregated US zip codes from a web form -- doing the
same for Canada wouldn't be difficult.  One of the things high on my
queue is hooking up geocoder to the geogratis electoral districts
shapefile; this means we can return the electoral district / mp, etc
when given a postal code or lat/long coordiates (and gives us the
opportunity to find a location by clicking on a map).

The main question is what can we redistribute? I think we are safe just
providing these things as a service (with a big disclaimer at the bottom
outlining the limitations of reuse, pointing at the backwards policies
of the source data).  Allowing people to download the whole thing is
probably okay, but we might have to attach a big ugly license to it.

If people are willing to help scrape the information, i'm willing to
host/present it.

Cheers,
Cory.