A885A/S657, the Elections Database & Institute Bill
New York is infamous for its election administration failures and lack of publicly available information. This bill, A885A/S657, would move New York from worst to first, creating the New York Voting and Elections Database and Institute housed within the State University of New York and the City University of New York to maintain and regulate public election data.
The Database and Institute would provide data including election results, district maps, poll sites, and more, and provide information useful not only to the public, but for election administrators and lawmakers to use as they continue the important work of improving elections in New York.
This sounds like an interesting concept that the State Senate has passed. While I have no opinion on it, I think it would be useful to take advantage for analysis should it become law, especially as it could make crunching state-wide numbers easy. Already, things have made a big step forward now that County Boards of Elections are required to post Shapefiles of Election Districts, although already that was coming the norm with most counties now having publicly-accessiable MapServers.