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For Government Staffers

County clerks, election administrators, and local officials need operational data — not research datasets. These are the questions government staff ask, with answers drawn from the dataset.

Office inventories

  • What offices exist in my county? Columbus County, NC has 25 distinct elected offices across county government, municipalities, school boards, and special districts. The pipeline produces per-county office inventories from L4 canonical records. See Office Inventory for a County.
  • How many races will be on the next ballot? Historical office inventories establish the set of offices that typically appear in a given election cycle. Odd-year vs. even-year patterns, staggered terms, and special elections are identifiable where source data includes election dates and term lengths.
  • Which offices are partisan vs. nonpartisan? Party affiliation is recorded where the source provides it. In North Carolina, all county commissioner races are partisan; all school board races are nonpartisan. Coverage varies by state.

Comparisons

  • How does our uncontested rate compare to peer counties? County-level uncontested rates are computable for any jurisdiction with coverage. A county clerk can compare their 60% uncontested rate against the state median or against demographically similar counties. See Uncontested Race Rate by State.
  • Are other counties consolidating offices we still elect separately? Office inventories across counties within a state reveal structural differences — some counties elect a coroner, others appoint one. The data does not explain why, but it shows where differences exist.
  • How many candidates typically file for each office? Candidate counts per contest are derivable from L4 records. A county with historically 1.2 candidates per school board seat has a different recruitment problem than one averaging 3.4.

Administrative planning

  • What does our ballot complexity look like over time? The number of contests per jurisdiction per cycle is queryable. Ballot length affects printing costs, voter fatigue research, and polling place logistics.
  • Which districts overlap our jurisdiction? Where OCD-IDs are present, hierarchical district relationships can be inferred. A county contains municipalities, school districts, and special districts — the data reflects which contests appear in which jurisdictions.

Data format

All outputs are JSONL with one record per contest-candidate pair. Government staff who need spreadsheets can convert JSONL to CSV with standard tools. See Querying JSONL Output.

Caveats

  • Office inventories are only as complete as the source data. If a state does not report local results to MEDSL or another covered source, those offices will not appear.
  • The pipeline documents sources and provides tools — it does not store or redistribute official election results. See The Project Does Not Store Data.
  • Seven states have zero local coverage in MEDSL 2022. Check the Coverage Matrix before relying on completeness for a specific jurisdiction.