Real-Time Election Results Mapping in Ottawa County, Mi

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 ESRIs 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!

ottawacountyrealtimemapping.jpgottawacountyrealtimemapping.jpg


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Date
November 7, 2006