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Re: elections canada

Posted by David Akin on Feb 04, 2007; 7:39pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/elections-canada-tp814p849.html

The contributors tables available at Elections Canada site do not
contain the same set of data that is available for each contributor.

In other words, I can download a table which will list the names and
amounts of all contributors to political parties but I cannot put a
postal code or city to those contributors.

But if I click on Elections Canada for information about an individual
contributor, I can retrieve postal code, address and city.

I have asked EC about this and they say they do not provide the
geographic data about each contributor, not out of respect for privacy
laws, but because they believe telemarketers would find such
information useful.

EC staff have never objected when I asked for the more complete tables
of contributors. As the EC main office is a few blocks from mine,
they've been happy to provide it on CD and actually walk me through
the table layout.

So my message would be:
If you want some data from EC -- ask them for it! They're pretty easy
to work with and they want to be pro-active in making this data
available for non-commercial use -- at least that's been my
experience.


On 2/2/07, Stéphane Zagar <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hugh : for the finance data, if you ask for data per contributor, you can
> have, for example, all data for all parties (only parties, not election
> finance rounds), for all periods (2005-2006) in one file (something like
> 9.5MB with means many many data). You can do the same for each general
> election : ask for contributor for all parties, all ridings.
>
> If we have to retrieve 1 set of data for each quarter and each general
> election, it,s not that bad.
>
> Cocnerning the tool for the ZIP code/riding, same conclusion as Daniel, no
> obvious way to retrieve that for what I can see.
>
>
> On 2/2/07, Daniel Haran <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > On 2/2/07, Hugh McGuire <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > > > For the other elements, I don't know. A mapping zipcode/riding
> > > > would be very useful for example
> > > elections canada provides this search tool:
> > > http://www.elections.ca/scripts/pss/FindED.aspx?L=e
> > >
> > > so the data is there... can we get it out tho?
> > > >
> > >
> > > h.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > [hidden email]
> >
> http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
> >
>
>
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>


--
David Akin
-------------------
http://www.davidakin.com