Azavea , an award-winning geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, today announces the launch of the “Online Citizen’s Guide” (guide.seventy.org) web application. The website is the result of a partnership with Committee of Seventy, the region’s premier non-partisan government watchdog group. The site provides the public with easy access to information about their polling place and elected official information based on any address in the Philadelphia region. These tools were designed by Azavea, leveraging the Cicero web API, Azavea’s address-based district matching and elected official lookup web service API. “We are proud to work with the Committee of Seventy in helping citizens across the region prepare for the upcoming elections,” said Robert Cheetham, Azavea’s President and CEO. “Easy-to-use tools like the Online Citizen's Guide strengthen our democracy by providing the public with access to information that enables them to participate more effectively in our democracy. We support Seventy's mission to educate the public about how to participate in the elections process.” Azavea and Seventy have previously worked on several other projects together. Most recently they launched Redistricting the Philadelphia Region (www.redistrictingthenation.com/philadelphia), a website and web application dedicated to raising public awareness in the Greater Philadelphia area about the potential impact of the 2010 census on the redistricting of federal, state and local election districts. Since 2006 Azavea has also partnered with Seventy on their signature Voter Protection Program – the nation’s largest and most sophisticated local nonpartisan Election Day operation that helps answer voters’ questions and resolve problems at the polls. During the historic November 2008 presidential election, Azavea’s innovative web-based Election Incident Mapping application mapped and tracked voting incidents in real-time to enable Seventy’s record-setting 1,000-person volunteer force to respond faster and more efficiently to issues reported in the field throughout the day. The Cicero web API currently provides legislative district boundaries and elected official information to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms. Cicero is currently powering elected official lookups on Our Philadelphia, a new website built by Common Cause Pennsylvania. The site tracks campaigns contributions in Pennsylvania and will also soon focus on redistricting reform for Philadelphia and the state, tracking the influence of lobbyists, and promoting higher ethical standards for public officials. Visit guide.seventy.org to try out the Online Citizen’s Guide tools and lookup your own polling place and elected officials. To request interviews, or for more information about the Cicero web API and Azavea’s other spatial analysis and software development services, please contact Abby Fretz at (215) 701 – 7503 or e-mail afretz@azavea.com
By entering their address into the tool at guide.seventy.org users can:
“With just three weeks to go before the primary election, we are excited to offer this easy-to-use enhanced resource for regional voters,” said Zachary Stalberg, President and CEO of the non-partisan organization that champions fair elections. “This is the time when voters focus on the election. The guide gives them information they can use not only for the election, but year-round when they want to contact the officials who represent their interests in federal, state and local government.”
