----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Aaron B Strauss <aaronbs@gmail.com>
To: John <johnaborras@yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, 25 July, 2008 2:24:22 PM
Subject: Re: VIP/EML CONVERGENCE?
VIP: only from state EMS's, but not all states
have street segment
info. To come up with a complete, 50-state solution, other third
parties (e.g., Google, Vote411) must rely on other sources such as
public voter files.
Yes, voters input their address -- sorry that I didn't make that clear
in the previous email.
Aaron
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:17 AM, John <johnaborras@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
> Aaron
>
> Where do you collect this additional data from - the State EMS or from
> other sources?
>
> Having got this additional data how would it be used by the third
> party to answer a voter who didn't know their precinct? Would the
> voter input their address and the system then have the necessary
> functionality to match that address to a precinct?
>
> John
>
> On Jul 25, 2:04 pm, "Aaron B Strauss" <aaro...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>> Most of this is absolutely correct. However, third-party solutions
>> never rely on (potential) voters knowing their precinct in order to
>> find their polling location. VIP's solution to this is to collect
>> three things:
>>
>> 1) A mapping of street segments into precincts.
>> 2) A mapping of precincts into polling locations
>> 3) Information about the polling locations (i.e., address, directions)
>>
>> Other third-parties collect publicly-available voter files (laws on
>> how public vary from state to state) and use the addresses in the
>> voter file to match addresses to precincts to polling locations.
>>
>> Aaron
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 5:22 AM, John <johnabor...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
>>
>> > Aaron/Doug
>>
>> > Following our recent telecon we've been having a few internal
>> > discussions about how we would manipulate EML to meet your needs,
>> > particulary the handling of addresses and geography. Daivd
Webber is
>> > working on a demo solution and we hope to be able to show you
that in
>> > the near future. In the meantime can you clarify some
aspects of the
>> > VIP functionality for my benefit at least please.
>>
>> > As I understand it States will provide a subset of data from
their EMS
>> > systems to third parties to use in their outlets to the
public. These
>> > subsets of data will not hold any voter information and will only
>> > provide a basic set of functionality to enable the third parties
to
>> > answer straight-forward questions or direct voters to the correct
>> > locations for accurate and specific information.
>>
>> > For example to answer the voter's enquiry of " Am I
registered to
>> > vote" the third party's system will only provide the URL of
the
>> > State's website where that particular question can be answered
using
>> > specifc voter credentials. The third party system will not
answer the
>> > question directly as it doesn't hold the voter registration data.
>>
>> > To answer the question "Which polling station do I use"
the third
>> > party system will provide a list of polling station(s) for each
>> > precinct and will assume the voter knows which precinct they
belong
>> > to. Basic data about polling station open times will be
provided with
>> > the address information. The third party's system will not
provide an
>> > enquiry system that matches the voter's address with the
appropriate
>> > polling station. If the voter doesn't know their precinct
they would
>> > be referred to the State's website where that information can be
>> > obtained by an address matching process again using some form of
>> > credential.
>>
>> > Other questions about absentee voting etc will be answered with
the
>> > URL of the State's website where that information is avialable.
>>
>> > So am I right to assume that the third parties will only provide
basic
>> > data and pointers to authorative sources rather than
sophisticated
>> > functionality to do address matching and voter matching?
>>
>> > John
>>
>> >