What is Protovoters?

Protovoters is a set of tools & specifications that make it possible to programmatically build, consume, and publish machine-readable voter files. Protovoters consists of 3 primary components: the Core Library, Interfaces and the Specification.

Core Library

The Core Library provides the underlying foundation for programmatically building voter files from open government data. The building blocks that provide this are loaders.

Loaders

Loaders are ES Modules (programs) that pull voter file data from a local government (usually in CSV format) and transforms it into data compliant with the Specification.

We need help developing loaders for more jurisdictions! If you'd like to contribute a loader, visit Developing Loaders.

For an example loader, see Travis County.

Interfaces

Interfaces are the “front-end” to the Core Library, or how you interact with Protovoters tooling to build voter files. This is distinct from the GIS software used to consume voter files, e.g. Google Earth or QGIS.

Currently, the only interface is the Command Line Interface (CLI).

Specification

The Protovoters Specification defines in terms of RDF what a voter file should look like, and how software should process it.

This allows for software that processes voter files to target many jurisdictions that have Protovoters loaders instead of building loaders for each jurisdiction they support themselves.

To view the specification, click here.