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title: OpenElections Documentation
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<h1>Welcome to the OpenElections Documentation</h1>

<p class="p-3 bg-info text-white"><i class="fa fa-info-circle" aria-hidden="true"></i>&nbsp; This site is here to help you become familiar with the project's goals, how it works and how you can help.</p>

<h2>What you need to know about the project and how to get involved</h2>

<p>The goal of OpenElections is to create the first free, comprehensive, standardized, linked set of election data for the United States, including federal, statewide and state legislative offices. No freely available comprehensive source of official election results exists. The current options for election data can be difficult to find and use or financially out-of-reach for most journalists and civic hackers. We want the people who work with election data to be able to get what they need, whether that's a CSV file for stories and data analysis or JSON usable for web applications and interactive graphics. We've got a <a href="http://openelections.net/">site</a>, <a href="http://blog.openelections.net/">blog</a>, <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/openelections">Google Group</a> and our code is <a href="https://github.com/openelections">on GitHub</a>.</p>

<h2>Help with 2020 Primary Election Results</h2>

<p>We're looking to collect and standardize precinct-level results from the 2020 primary election for all federal and state races. You can track our progress <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15_7PV0AuLjMgutAGiuGVquZJQ2l0lWkusckuHhIBXrQ/edit?usp=sharing">here</a> and, if you want to pitch in, email us or head to <a href="https://github.com/openelections/">GitHub</a> to find the state you want to work on. Our needs range from converting PDFs to OCR jobs to scraping, and more. We can figure out how to best use your time and talents.</p>

<h2>Helping OpenElections without Programming</h2>

<p>You don't need to be a programmer or developer to pitch in. We need help with several non-programming tasks, including collecting information about what results are available for an election, turning results information locked in PDFs into text files and other tasks. You can:</p>

<ul>
  <li><a href="getting-involved/">Collect election metadata</a></li>
  <li><a href="data-entry/">Type in election results</a></li>
  <li>Start with one of our <a href="easy-tasks/">easy tasks</a>, converting electronic PDFs and HTML to CSVs.</li>
  <li><a href="volunteering/">Learn what our volunteers do</a></li>
  <li>Add or improve tutorials and other documentation</li>
</ul>

<h2>Contributing Code to OpenElections</h2>

<p>If you are a developer (particularly if you know Python), we could use your help converting official election results into data. There are several ways to do this, depending on your experience and interest:</p>

<ul>
  <li>Writing <a href="guide/preprocessing/">scrapers</a> to convert HTML or PDF results to CSVs.</li>
  <li>Writing code to load a state's results into our <a href="guide/">processing pipeline</a> (or parts of it).</li>
  <li>Addressing <a href="https://github.com/openelections/openelections-core/issues">issues in the core repository</a>.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Reaching the community</h2>

<p>If you have questions or want to find other people involved in the project, here are some ways to do it:</p>

<ul>
  <li><a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openelections">Google Group</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://github.com/openelections">GitHub</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://twitter.com/openelex">Twitter</a></li>
  <li><a href="mailto:openelections@gmail.com">Email</a></li>
</ul>