Election Central Project: Background

Election Central is a noncommercial, citizen effort to provide timely and detailed local election results and information. It is hoped others will provide pre-election information.

The amount and quality of pre-election information depends on the candidates, the parties, and the availability of public resources. Although we will gladly provide links, Internet providers and South Carolina Election Central are not responsible for the content of any such link.

This project attempts to fill two voids. First, the media do not cover local elections as intensely as general elections. Second, since the Internet is viewed as a worldwide medium, many public officials fail to see its local or instate potential.

It is difficult for TV and radio stations to report realtime, local election results. And newspapers, while reporting vote totals, may be pressed to print detailed data. Election Central can give your community realtime access to the precinct level.

While it's true a WWW page is readable from anywhere in the world, it's just as readable from 2 miles away. Election Central uses the Internet to get local information to local citizens.

And this project can do more. It involves voters in the counting. Letting them compare precinct counts or turnouts. Letting them do their own analysis.

This system was designed to be used by moderately knowledgable private citizens. With a little help from a WWW provider, they can make real time results easily available. Giving end users details usually reserved for TV analysts.

Thanks to:

A World of Difference, Inc. - a Charleston, SC, Internet Provider
Truett F. Nettles, Esq. - former Charleston County Election Chairman
North Charleston Election Commission - Commissioners and staff
Bob Chapman of Earth Art BBS - inspired the time counter

This project is a child of the 1995 National Online Town Meeting - thanks to Mark C. Nasstrom. Mark wrote about a similar service he performed for his rural Oregan community in 1994. Mark took the first step - manually computing and posting to a BBS. We've taken the next step - automated computation and posting to HTML pages.

Election Central Project: The Software

The beta software for Election Central is a two program suite. Two versions are available (PC DOS and UNIX type). They create both HTML and TXT files.

A ZIP of the programs and sample setup files are available, send a request to jimf@awod.com (Jim Faucette). Please explain your intended use.

These are copyrighted programs, but are freely available for non-commercial purposes. For commercial use (including radio, TV, and newspapers) licenses are negotitable.

The programs can only be distributed by the author. Any other distribution is a violation of the copyright.

All contents Copyright © 1995, Jim Faucette. Web space furnished by A World Of Difference, Inc. All Rights Reserved.