[CivicAccess-discuss] Free US Census data leads to analysis of Electoral results!

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

Did anyone notice that during the Canadian elections there were few if any
maps on the Tele Screen?

There were no magic pyramid charts with bars with a demographic group marked
on it and associated to each electoral district and a tap on the board
yielding a pop out pie chart?

Has anyone seen in the private media the breakdown of the Canadian vote by
electoral district and a discussion of who lives there?

Have you noticed the silences in blogs about organizing and stategizing
around certain demographic groups, the pattern of the vote and etc.?

Have you read in Canada about the anglophone vote, Haitian vote, Chinese
vote, aboriginal vote, eastern European vote, youth vote, poor vote, rich
vote, senior's vote, womyn's vote, men's vote, etc.?

Well we cannot even imagine having that conversation because our public data
are locked up in the deep lurkium dbases of Statistics Canada, while our
public electoral maps are locked up, funny, also in the same dbase, and the
key to all of these are the Cost Recovery Price!

How are we to imagine our country in all its diversity if we are not even
allowed to make pictures that tell us part of our story?  These last two
elections - back to back - made obvious the real cost to locked up data - a
collective national ignorance!

I have been reading blogs about Proposition 8 (same sex marriage) vote in
the US, the demographic breakdown of those results, and was drooling over
the visuals i watched on election night.  Seems to me, the data, the
infrastructure and the pictures can help us have a conversation about
sameness and differences.  Canada however remains silent!

-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
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