Integrating GIS and World Wide Web for local elections -- a case study in College Station, Texas

Abstract

New communication technologies in general and the Internet in particular are changing political life in America. The World Wide Web provides a variety of information with easy access for voters. This thesis explores how the local voting results could be effectively managed by a Relational Database Management System, and how internal and external information communication is easily achieved through the Web. A case study was carried out using local election data from College Station, Texas. A voter information system was developed by integrating GIS and World Wide Web database. Using GIS application software (Arc/View) to manage spatial data and a RDBMS (Unix Oracle database) to manage attribute data, the system can import or export data tables for information management and analysis efficiency. CGI programs are written to connect the database with the users on the Internet. The Web application efficiently and effectively sets up different online services for elections, such as reference maps for precincts in College Station, querying voting places, and viewing local election turnouts in previous years. The thesis finds that the new era of communication can provide better data access for local elections to greatly facilitate information sharing between the government and the voters. Improvement in information access can also potentially promote political participation and help inform the public. Spatial voting patterns for several recent local elections in College Station have been analyzed. Results show that two ballots from College Station local election events have high correlation with the ballots on the recent Munson Avenue issue. The voting patterns are found to have a similar spatial distribution pattern. It suggests that the group of people who vote did not change much in College Station between elections. Those voters are considered to be the kind of residents who have a consistent desire to seek ways of helping local government solve community problems. The voting information system built online could serve those people in the best possible way.