All Categories : Technical Papers : 2005 ESRI User Conference Proceedings

Accurate district coding is essential to the proper functioning of the election process. This presents an ever-present challenge to Maricopa County, Arizona, with more than 1.5 million registered voters and an extremely fluid and growing population. GIS-based technologies provide an effective solution. This paper will present a project undertaken by the Maricopa County Recorder/Elections Department to assimilate GIS data and methods into the Department's Voter Registration System to automatically place voters in their proper precincts and districts. The project combines address locations and spatial data maintained by ESRI software with the enterprise system and voter data to derive the proper district codes. The software and technology employed include ArcGIS and ArcSDE, Microsoft SQL Server and VB. NET, and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant methods and spatial data types. The project demonstrates a successful assimilation of GIS technology into an existing system architecture and development environment.