Now how nice is this? The Ottawa County GIS Department and the Ottawa County Clerk have teamed up to offer real time election results for their county. Michigan is one of those interesting battleground states that everyone will be watching tonight. Results will begin to become available shortly after polls close at 8:00 pm EST so make sure you check back to see what your fellow citizens in Ottawa County are feeling. One note is that you’ll need Internet Explorer to view the maps so don’t try and use Firefox. Michael Muskovin, GIS Programmer for the county explains that the site is running ESRI’s ArcIMS and SDE 9.1 with Microsoft’s SQLServer on the backend. Mike explains the update process:
Our Clerk’s office receives results from the polls starting at 8:00. Their election software exports both ASCII and HTML files. In the past, they’ve only displayed text data using the HTML file (I’ve included a link to this file near the top of the page I sent you). I take the ASCII data and automated a process that updates the data to a SQL table. That table is joined to precinct and contest feature classes using unique candidate and race numbers. I then use a simple VALUEMAPRENDERER to display the winner on IMS.
Way cool!
8 responses so far ↓
1
Mike
// Nov 7, 2006 at 10:26 am
I actually use Firefox with ietab (http://ietab.mozdev.org/) to view the site. We’ll be re-developing the site in .Net in the future so this won’t be a pain too much longer.
2
James Fee
// Nov 7, 2006 at 10:27 am
Any ArcIMS developer knows the pain you go through getting this stuff running.
3
Brian Timoney
// Nov 7, 2006 at 11:32 am
James:
Election season seems to bring more than its fair share of Flash maps. I’m monitoring this site today–
http://www.pollster.com/senate.php
Flash + PHP + XML and you have easy data updates with some nice aesthetics and usability.
Brian
4
Mike
// Nov 7, 2006 at 11:37 am
That is a very nice interface. Maybe for the next iteration.
5
Dave
// Nov 7, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Very interesting - I actually built and deployed their site back in 2001 (Mike - is Jennifer M. still there?)
Odd side note: I was actually in their server room, installing this site on 9/11, and Jennifer came in and said “They bombed the Pentagon.”
Very cool to see that it’s both still alive and that they have been able to re-use the modular design (classic ASP, so it’s kinda hoopdy, but clearly still running.)
Dave
6
Mike
// Nov 7, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Hi Dave.
Jen moved to another department. I’ve only been here for two years so we’ve never met (maybe in March at the Developer Summit). The way you developed the site has really allowed me to expand it.
We’re planning to reconstruct the site (perhaps with AGS 9.2 and .Net) next year.
7
Zachary Christoff
// Nov 8, 2006 at 10:09 am
Hennepin County’s Attempt… It’s real-time with choropleth mapping… Runs on SDE / ArcIMS 9.1 using .Net
8
James Fee
// Nov 8, 2006 at 10:21 am
That is pretty cool Zachary!
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