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votinginfoproject / vip-specification

The Voting Information Project XML specification.
http://vip-specification.readthedocs.io/en/release/
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Feature/issue 351 structured polling locations #387

Closed afsmythe closed 4 years ago

afsmythe commented 4 years ago

This includes updates the YAML, RST and XSD files to support structured addresses for PollingLocation objects. The 5.2 revision will give the option to provide structured or unstructured addresses for polling locations via choice in the XSD file. Further discussion around this revision update is found here: https://github.com/votinginfoproject/vip-specification/issues/351

This PR also relocates the PollingLocation XML example from lat_lng.yaml to polling_location.yaml.

afsmythe commented 4 years ago

@jdmgoogle apologies but by accident I merged in the commits to add a PollingLocation.Alias to this PR. Hope thats okay but if you'd rather they be separate PRs I can try to fix.

jdmgoogle commented 4 years ago

I'm not 100% clear on what an alias is, or how it's different from the name. The description makes it sound like some class of polling place, not an alias. What type of information, specifically, is trying to be captured here? What's the motivation for adding it?

afsmythe commented 4 years ago

Thanks, @jdmgoogle. I think you're right in categorizing this as a class of PollingLocation.

We've gotten some feedback from States who would prefer to be able to use their own terms when describing a polling location. For example, in Colorado they use "VSPC" instead of "Polling Location" and would like that information surfaced in the API in some way. In Georgia, early voting locations are referred to as "Advanced Voting Sites" rather than "Early Voting Sites". Hope that adds some clarity and I'd be happy to provide a bit more detail.

Is this a change that would be better implemented with Enumerations? If yes, I think we could put together a list of what the States are using.

jdmgoogle commented 4 years ago

I think that's something that belongs in the Name field.

Also, how many of these changes are because that's how the law/election officials refer to them, versus how the general public refers to them? E.g., if we pull Random J. Voter off the street in Georgia and ask them if they plan to go to a local precinct or early voting site, will we get a blank look, a long pause and a ".... early voting? You mean ... Advanced Voting Site?" or will they know what we mean?

afsmythe commented 4 years ago

Most 5.1 states are using PollingLocation.Name to list the building name of the polling location. This PR also seems to agree that name of the building, rather than a description of the location type, is what should be placed here.

The reason for adding an Alias type field to PollingLocation is because this has been requested by the elections offices in the States. As far as we know, the elections offices use these terms (VSPC in Colorado, Vote Center in many states, etc.) and so I think it is likely that a learned voter in the State would know what is meant by such a description.

jdmgoogle commented 4 years ago

I understand that the states are asking for this in the spec, but this would require work to plumb through end-to-end across all surfaces. Additionally, I'm trying to figure out the benefit to the user since these are already getting tagged in the schema as early voting locations. Is there actual user benefit to this, or is this purely because the states want to see words that are familiar to them?