difference between official and unofficial?

[Jesse Littlewood]

Hi -

On the API data availability schedule for some states there will be no 'official' data; but there will be 'unofficial.'

What does unofficial mean in this context? How will that data be generated and verified?

Thanks

Jesse

[Cong Chen]

Hi Jesse,

The official data come from VIP. It is data that State and counties export out of their databases for the purpose of sharing with Google and other interested parties for free. The "unofficial" data, on the other hand, come from a variety of sources. They may be constructed from a voter file with hand-sourced access to polling locations, early voting sites and etc. For unofficial data, we may also need a lot of heavy lifting (such as join the data from various sources) to make it available.

Hope this helps!

Cong

[Taylor D]

Is it possible unofficial data is outdated? Like when I see "unofficial data for Ohio voting locations, I think it could mean it is from 2012 or 2014. I looked at the unofficial data for early voting locations in Ohio and wasn't really 100% sure. Can you explain any further on the timeliness of the unofficial data? Is it always captured for this election? 

[Cong Chen]

Hi Taylor,

The unofficial data, once made available for a state shall not be outdated. For whether unofficial data is live or not, you can check the data availability chat. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wlADr7MYFSheWk1MqfnhQxsn3IdweLNo6KRqI1IBBy0/pubhtml

For Ohio, the unofficial data that is live includes EV and ballot (state leg and above).

Thanks,

Cong

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