Standardizing Shapefile Coordinate Systems - sketch-city/texasvotes GitHub Wiki

Why Do We Need to Do This?

The best I can figure out, it's just easier to load the data in and work with it if it is all in one coordinate system. Queries weren't working before. If you know a solution to make this unnecessary, open an issue with a fix! Hopefully in the future, this can be automated or something so this step isn't necessary. At this point, however, it isn't.

Why WGS 84?

This seems to be the coordinate system used by GPS, so we can easily make queries against the database using coordinates returned by devices and geocoding APIs.

Converting Precinct Shapefiles With QGIS

1. Open QGIS and create a new project.
2. Add a vector layer, and choose the .shp file.
3. With the layer loaded from your .shp selected, in your menu, choose Layer -> Save As...
4. Under the CRS dropdown, choose Default CRS (EPSG:4326 - WGS 84)
5. Under Save as, give it a name, then hit OK at the bottom of the window.

This should give you a shapefile that you can load into your database.