Data Entry for July 2019 semi annual campaign finance reports - OpenMaine/campaign-finance GitHub Wiki

Goals for volunteer typists:

  1. Type in information from scanned campaign contribution sheets
  2. We will capture specific information (e.g., not street addresses)
  3. We will also need to go online to get precinct info for Portland donations
  4. When you are done with a page, send it to Clare, [email protected]

Steps for volunteers

  1. Claim a page that you will type in, by adding your name here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zPeQbKAcjcUG8RYtJkgv_9hl2s4LGY6SzHj1oLv1R8k/edit#gid=0
    (okay to use a nickname or initials; please email Clare so that we can know who that secret code is)

  2. Find the candidate PDF and the specific page in the PressHerald pdfs here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YZxqx-DC3a9V1pZ_TZvrR9iDC56pzoYH

(Note: there is an optical-character-recognition (OCR) file for Spencer Thibodeau, which might or might not help.)

  1. If a page is unreadable or missing, you might need to refer to the camera images, which are generally less useful. These are here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17-nkSbhckJl9lxhJ4BCIs_i_yOzauIyM

  2. Type into a spreadsheet (google sheets, excel, libre office are all fine) See this example for the columns we are capturing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p9I7KhVX02lylNVDkTW8dDrOiiRFWGBmc8CuL_aSysU/edit#gid=0
    (more details below)

  3. When you are done, send your page to Clare, [email protected]

  4. Repeat as often as you like.

Note: we know that you are human and that there will be mistakes; please just do your best.

Data we are capturing

  1. Candidate/page
    e.g., 'Strimling 2/38'
    this will be the same for all lines on your sheet; no need to repeat on each line, but please enter it once

  2. Line number on this page (in lieu of person's name)
    1-10 for Strimling, 1-44 for Thibodeau (I think)

  3. Date of donation

  4. Amount of donation

  5. Type of donation (e.g., individual, but it's a number)
    Candidates used different numeric conventions; just type what you see
    (e.g., it's probably a '1' for an individual contribution)

  6. City

  7. State

  8. Zip

  9. If this is a Portland resident, we have decided to capture voting precinct (and not individual addresses)
    (leave blank for non-Portland residents)
    Portland precincts can be looked up here: https://www1.maine.gov/portal/government/edemocracy/voter_lookup.php
    (you will need to type in the address, but we're not saving this info)
    There is a hard-to-read map here, if you're interested: http://portlandmaine.gov/DocumentCenter/View/4069/Voting-Districts-With-Side-Panels-36x42?bidId=
    There are five wards, each with 2 or 3 precincts
    please enter this as 1-2, 3-2, 4-1, whatever (ward-precinct)

Dealing with unusual things:

  1. Note that there are several islands that are in Portland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Islands_of_Portland,_Maine though there don't seem to be many. If you notice one of these islands, please also look up the ward-precinct info.
  2. You might run into a PO box; this would mean that we don't really know where the person lives. Please enter ?-?.

Again, please mail your sheet to Clare when done, [email protected]

For Strimling, we have 30 pages of schedule A (donations), and 7 pages of schedule B (expeditures), but his pages are not 'dense'(~10 donors/page)

For Thibodeau, we have 7 pages of schedule A and 3 pages of schedule B, but the pages are dense (~35 donors/page)

For Snyder, we have a spreadsheet, but will still need to lookup precincts