Incorrect (ex) terms for current officials in YAML - Githubissues

unitedstates / congress-legislators

Members of the United States Congress, 1789-Present, in YAML/JSON/CSV, as well as committees, presidents, and vice presidents.

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Incorrect (ex) terms for current officials in YAML #266

Open vadvv opened 9 years ago

vadvv commented 9 years ago

We're trying to match the terms in here (got the yaml data from GovTrack) to the terms we have in our system. While doing that I've come across a bunch of officials who had incorrect term dates. The reason I think they are important is that it when there are proper term dates, it becomes easier to show historical votes for chambers.

I'll be listing the improper dates I see over here. If there's a better way to do this, please let me know and I can post this at the right avenue.

vadvv commented 9 years ago

I found another incorrect term. This one's for Sen. James Inhofe

type: rep start: '1993-01-05' end: '1994-11-15' state: OK district: 1 party: Republican
type: sen start: '1994-01-01' end: '1996-10-04' state: OK class: 2 party: Republican

As you can see, the last term as a US Representative was until 15th Nov 1994, but the term as a US Senator starts 1st Jan the same year. The correct start date for his term as a senator is 16th November 1994.

vadvv commented 9 years ago

Senator Murkowski was appointed to her Senate seat at the tail end of another Senator (Her dad, Frank Murkowski) who became Governor of Alaska. So She should have a term starting December 20th 2002. Currently in the yaml file there is no such term for her.

vadvv commented 9 years ago

Senator Ron Wyden's (OR) terms have a similar overlapping term problem as Sen. James Inhofe (OK). His last term as a Representative overlaps his first term as a Senator.

type: rep start: '1995-01-04' end: '1996-02-05' state: OR district: 3 party: Democrat
type: sen start: '1996-01-01' end: '1998-12-19' state: OR class: 3 party: Democrat

vadvv commented 9 years ago

Representative Steny Hoyer's first terms began on 19th May 1981. In the yaml file, the date is incorrectly shown as 5th Jan 1981.

vadvv commented 9 years ago

John Cornyn. The very first term in the list is this:

type: sen start: '2002-01-01' end: '2002-11-22' state: TX class: 2 party: Republican

That cannot be since he was the Attorney General of Texas for that duration and so could not have been a US Senator at the same time.

vadvv commented 9 years ago

Representative Sam Johnson started his first term on May 8th 1991. The yaml file says he started on 1st Jan that year. It needs to be corrected.

type: rep start: '1991-01-03' end: '1992-10-09' state: TX district: 3 party: Republican

JoshData commented 9 years ago

Hey, thanks.

These problems date back to when I back-filled my data many years ago. I knew which congresses the Members served in but when they came in via an appointment or special election, not which dates.

Senator Murkowski was appointed to her Senate seat at the tail end of another Senator (Her dad, Frank Murkowski) who became Governor of Alaska. So She should have a term starting December 20th 2002. Currently in the yaml file there is no such term for her.

For this one, see https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators/commit/44a9467a334de2db08f7f17490d401a8c273d723. Start dates are swearing-in dates where possible. Your other errors sound right, though if you haven't already we should double check that they are swearing-in dates, if known, otherwise appointment dates.

A slightly more efficient way to submit this would be to fork the repository, make the changes, and submit a pull request (with the same explanations in the commit message & pull request description).