I've you been to the Links page here, you may have noticed a crabby little whiny rant from me about the impossibility of reliably linking to regional maps at the Elections Canada website.

Well I would take it all back, given that they've recently added a new button on their main page called the "Map Corner". The link takes you to a new collection of PDF and JPG maps of the country and provinces, and if you drill down to the right spot you can find the regional maps as well. Or if you get curious about what "Other Cartographic Products" means, you'll be rewarded with a link to the newly-available shapefiles over at the GeoGratis site.

But the Map Corner maps aren't the same clickable maps offered through the Voter Information Service site, where you can start with a provincial map and click through to the regional maps and/or riding maps. [See the Tech Talk section below if this "clickable maps" link didn't work for you.]

In fact I don't understand the rationale for offering different but similar things in different spots all over that website, and then having such tortuous methods of navigation to find anything (oops, there's me getting crabby and whiny again). For example, if you go to the Manitoba page of the Map Corner, you can't get the provincial map of Manitoba, just the riding and Winnipeg regional map. Why not? Instead you have to go backwards/upwards. This small example repeats the truly awful organization and navigation of the financial returns site. If I didn't already know they're planning a complete overhaul of the entire Elections Canada site, I'd probably rant on a bit longer.

Lord knows my own website is far from perfect, and my own efforts at site redesign are dragging on and suffering from a lack of time and energy here, so I'm really the last one who should criticize.

But if they're going to add a "Map Corner" at the Elections Canada, shouldn't it include all the maps they have? Particularly the ones that are the most user-friendly? And with links we can reliably link to externally? Unlike the Globe and Mail, which doesn't want to redirect its readers away from their site to the Auditor-General's, I'm totally fine with that assuming I can be assured the links will work reliably.

So, again I ask ... why doesn't the Elections Canada website allow us to reliably link to all the data and mapping resources it publishes?

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[Tech-talk alert:] Here's what I do to actually find links to Elections Canada resources:

• I use Firefox as the browser for all my web development, because you can get wonderful Extensions like the "DOM Inspector" and the "Web Developer" extension.
• Web Developer includes a utility that converts Forms from Post to Get.
• So, in Firefox I navigate all the way through the Elections Canada site (for example the Contributions and Expenses database) until I get to the last click before the one I want; then
• I convert the Form method from Post to Get using Web Developer, and then
  
• make the final click; after which I can
  
• copy the resulting URL from the browser's Address Bar into my blogpost or my database, or program code

The specific complaint I'm whining about on the Links page here is that, even after doing all of that, the resulting link still only works if you've already been to the Elections Canada website at least once with the same browser on the same computer on the same day. In fact, I bet the clickable map of Ontario I linked to above probably didn't work for you if you hadn't already visited the Elections Canada website once today.

I assume they're setting some session variables, which assumes that people only want to search their resources from within their own site, and won't ever want to link to the resources they find. Given how convoluted the Elections Canada search and navigation functionality is, that assumption is a bit of a stretch. I specifically wanted to add direct links to Elections Canada resources on my website, so I wouldn't have to go through the whole rigamarole each time to find the items I want.

So nice try with the Maps Corner, but please don't give up on your efforts to rebuild that site from the bottom up, folks.

Labels: Elections Canada

From a news release just added to the Elections Canada website:

Registered Political Parties Submit 2008 Fiscal Returns

OTTAWA, Thursday, July 2, 2009

• The deadline for registered parties to file financial transaction returns for 2008 was midnight, June 30, 2009. These returns are reports on contributions, loans, transfers, by-election expenses and unpaid claims. Party financial statements are also included with the returns.
• The Chief Electoral Officer of Canada may grant a deadline extension if a political party applies for one before the statutory deadline. As of June 30, 2009, the following political parties have applied for and been granted an extension:
  • Christian Heritage Party of Canada
  • First Peoples National Party of Canada
  • Libertarian Party of Canada
  • Progressive Canadian Party
• As soon as possible after they are received, Elections Canada posts the returns for 2008 in a searchable database at www.elections.ca.

Elections Canada is an independent body set up by Parliament.

- 30 -

As of a minute ago, the Liberal Party's return was still not posted. They had until midnight Tuesday to submit it, and were not granted an extension. Thus, as we previously assumed, it must be in the process of getting ready to be posted.

Labels: Elections Canada, Liberals, Party Finance

The Chief Electoral Officer is now advocating in favour of moving to online voting. Many of us who've worked in both IT and election campaigns have an idea of just how complicated an undertaking this would be ... from the perspectives of both security and of allowing the vote to be scrutinized.

Someone who's taken the time and trouble to explain the problems to non-IT professionals without dumbing it down is former Calgary West, AB Independent candidate Kirk Schmidt (also the very first person I didn't know who found the Pundits' Guide and wrote to me about it). Schmidt has written an excellent guest post at the Enlightened Savage blog, which is mandatory reading for anyone thinking that online voting is a panacea to turnout problems.

Labels: Elections Canada, Online Voting

I received this letter from Elections Canada this morning, in reply to a letter I wrote last week requesting that Geographic Information System (GIS) files describing polling division boundaries, along with Street Indexes and Poll Keys, be made publicly available.

As you are aware, Elections Canada publishes the Electoral District Boundary Files in digital format (Shapefiles) of the 37th, 38th, 39th General Elections on the GeoGratis website. However, you are correct in saying that the polling division boundaries are not currently available on the Internet.

Our plan is to include the polling division geographic reference information on the GeoGratis website in the near future. In fact, our Geography department will undertake discussions with GeoGratis representatives to ensure that the digital polling division boundary files are available to the public. At the same time, we will also add the boundary files for the 2008 Elections (Electoral Districts and Polling Divisions). As for the Street Indexes, the Electoral Geography Division at Elections Cnaada is currently working on the feasibility of providing the Street Indexes and other products on Elections Canada website or other internet link.

If you have further questions, etc., etc. .... Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention and for your continued interest in the federal electoral process.

I hope they can put older elections up onto GeoGratis as well, but this would be a great start.

Thanks to the Electoral Geography Division for their commitment to open government data.

Labels: Elections Canada, Open Government Data