Describe how election date fields fit together.

[nbanion]

The Election Guide API data include several datetime variables for important times and time spans in the electoral cycle. Using the API specs on Google Drive, summarize what these variables represent, and how they fit together.

Write up your findings for the project documentation. Consider including a diagram.

[nbanion]

The election data include some interesting date fields.

• election_range_start_date: Theoretical first day to vote.
• election_range_end_date: Theoretical last day to vote.
• election_declared_start_date: Actual first day to vote.
• election_declared_end_date: Actual last day to vote.
• election_candidate_filing_deadline: Last day to file for candidacy.
• voter_registration_deadline: Last day to register to vote.
• verified_date: Date a third party verifies the election (not in data dictionary)?

The voting method data do too:

• method_start: The first day to vote by a certain method.
• method_end: The last day to vote by a certain method.

[nbanion]

... however, the values are either spotty or completely empty. We will want to know if these data will update to be more complete.

Here is the coverage for the elections fields. The voting methods fields are all missing.

[nbanion]

Some notes from Bailey at IFES:

To your second point, yes, we expect around 30 additional elections – with the full, or near full – sets of data to be entered within the next month. There are a few reasons for spotty/incomplete date variables:

• We began the more extensive data collection efforts last year with 63 countries with expected elections, and again this year with another 60. A lot of these countries have tentative dates (ex. legally must be held by September 31st), but at the time of research do not have a set date. This impacts a variety of fields – voter registration and candidate filing deadlines, “set date”, the voting provisions dates, etc.
• There are additional snap elections that pop up throughout the course of the year, countries which were not on the list and therefore unfunded. We don’t have the resources to confirm the full set of data, but will include the fields we can find with confirmation – typically the set date. Therefore, all of the other fields are blank (unfortunately).
• On the “set date” and “range date” – the latter is always included if the day is unknown, pulled directly from the country’s legal framework or from historical trends (ex. the past two Moldovan parliamentary elections were held at the end of May) . The range date may be omitted if it is not clear from these two factors, or if there is already a set date for an election.

[nbanion]

From Bailey's notes, it sounds like many missing date values may be unavoidable. Also sounds like 30 or so elections are still coming in. Not sure from the note how complete these records will be.

[nbanion]

As things stand, I think our options are pretty limited for creating electoral cycle timelines from available data. A couple ideas that might or might not be useful:

• How close are actual election dates to expected election dates?
• What times of year have the most elections, and are therefor busy for stakeholders?