St. Joseph County Election Maps Confuse Voters

The maps (a series of PDFs) had shaded and non-shaded areas and dots noting voting locations. Many residents looked at the maps and ended up at the wrong location. At least one voter could not vote because by the time he was at the correct location, the polls had closed. So, what was the issue? Apparently some shading was at fault.

A closer look at the map revealed McFarland’s neighborhood wasn’t shaded at all. It was in a white area surrounded by the darker tone.
...

Both Brunette and Silcott said the white area was an area in the county where there were not homes, but industries and businesses. WSBT News cameras found a well-established housing development.

The GIS official John Carlson explained that existing boundaries were used and consolidated into polling places, created by the County Voter Registration. He said he can fix the problem. He also noted that maps were to be used as references and were not warranted for accuracy.

- WSBT
- county voter maps (pdf)

Tuscany’s Open Source GIS Evolves

Officials of the Tuscany region (Italy) have published a new version of its GIS website built on SagaDB  (Sistema di Accesso Georeferenziato alle Banche Dati).

The development effort began back in 2001and originally used GRASS. The latest version, released under GPL does’t use it anymore. The solution supports “the creation of dynamic or pre-processed maps, where the graphic attributes can be processed by either the client or the server.”

Why is app open source? “According to [dev team member Viviana] Cossi, the Tuscany regional administration decided to publish Sagabd as open source for two reasons. “Making it available as open source makes it easy to incorporate existing code into a project”, she says. Secondly, the region as a matter of principle has a policy to select open source software wherever possible.”

- eGov Monitor