Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
By Jill Soley
Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (http://www.uselectionatlas.org/)
is a 4500 page website containing data from the recent and past United
States presidential elections. It was made not for any financial or
academic pursuit, but simply as a labor of love. Dave Leip thought
this site should exist, so he made it.
The amount of information on the site is amazing and it is presented
in a very clear and organized manner. Users can search for election
results by year (dating back to 1789) or by state, view maps and charts,
look up historical documents, etc. For the 2000 election, Leip copied
candidate position statements from the candidate websites, attempting
to be as objective as possible. Unlike the official news websites,
he included Nader (Green Party), Buchanan (Reform Party), Harry Browne
(Libertarian Party), John Hagelin (Natural Law Party), Howard Phillips
(Constitution Party), and a few others who you probably never heard
about because the official news never considered them newsworthy.
During the 2000 presidential election, he kept the site up to date
with primary results as they occurred.
In creating the historical part of the site, Leip collected data
from separate agencies in each of the 50 states. Sources are referenced
on the site. Prior to this website, there was no single national source
for this information. His website was also more thorough than any
of the existing news sites. As a result, last fall, several of the
leading newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
and San Jose Mercury News printed charts, maps, and data from this
site, sourcing it in their articles. In doing so, only some of the
journalists contacted Leip to verify the source of the data and ask
for permission to reference his website.
Before the Internet, Someone like Leip never would have compiled
this kind of information, and he certainly would not have been able
to do so on a public space. Now, his hobby has become an information
source for our news sources. It also happens that, since I know Dave
Leip, I know how meticulous he is about the accuracy of his website.
But, to the rest of the world, Dave is just a random guy. How does
the Wall Street Journal Reporter know that his data is accurate?
Validating information found on the Internet is a difficult task.
Unless a known entity is publishing the information, there is no sure
way to know that the information presented is accurate because no
known person or entity is standing behind the information with its
reputation at stake. If our trusted news sources are using these questionable
sources for their information, and not even checking the sources,
then what does that suggest about their credibility?
At the same time, the fact that anyone with time and interest can
publish this kind of site is precisely what is interesting about the
Internet. Any information you might need or want probably exists somewhere
online and if it doesn't, you can create it and make it accessible
to others. What this means is that when the news media decides to
omit information about a subject, you can still find it. Reading only
the major newspapers, I might never have known much about Ralph Nader's
platform. Without Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections,
I certainly never would have known that the Prohibition Party and
Natural Law Party had presidential candidates in 2000, who they were,
and what their platforms were.