Blockwalking for "unregistered voters" in Harris County

Time is getting tight: October 9 is the deadline to register to vote ahead of the 2018 election. So despite the fact that its creation was a feat of patience and persistence and coding creativity, I shan't waste too much time introducing the content. 

This specific dataset covers those 198,256 single family homes in Harris County that do not have a registered voter at the address (according to public records, as of 8/23/18). You can download the zipped XLS here.

The addresses are listed by precinct. The addresses are separated out by state Senate district, and the crosswalk on the top tab will help you figure out which tab(s) you'll need for your purposes. These are the column headers and their definitions.

• precinct: Precinct where the address is located (there are 1012 in the county). I highly recommend the interactive map of precincts that I found while perusing the Harris County Voter Registrar website. See image below, or at the URL. 
• site_addr: The site's address: number, street, and unit number (sometimes).
• city,zip, streetName: Hopefully self-explanatory.
• propType: single family homes, as our team identified by various fields associated with the account in the Harris County Appraiser District database(s).
• saleDate: Date of the most recent sale of the property.
• ownerOccupied: Educated guess about whether the owner of the property lives at the address. Basically, whether the "mail-to" address on the HCAD file matches the location of the property site.
• RVhere: Is there a Registered Voter here? As of 8/23/18.
• hcad_account: HCAD account number (public record, from HCAD).
• tx_house: Texas legislative district associated with the precinct, as of 2018.
• tx_senate: Texas senate district associated with the precinct, as of 2018.
• us_house: US Congressional district associated with the precinct, as of 2018.

In closing, two helpful tips and two caveats:

• This file is too big for Google Sheets, so don't take it personally if you are having trouble opening it! Once you click the link above, click the "download" icon towards the top right of the screen and save it to your own computer. Then you should be able to unzip the file using your computer's already-installed software... and then open the XLSX using Excel or any other software (Apple has the "Numbers" program, or you could try "LibreOffice" if you're going the open-source route).
• YouTube has great tutorials for Excel users if you need more information about how to manipulate this file once it's been downloaded locally and unzipped.
• From my perspective, the act of voter registration is a non-partisan activity... so I have no problem putting this information on a public-facing page. If our political 'opponents' (whatever that even means these days) want to get folks registered too, I can't argue with that. 
• Finally, a quick reminder that it is a criminal offense to use voter registration information in connection with advertising or promoting commercial products or services. (See Tex. Elec. Code Ann. §18.009.) So while this is not voter registration information, please be responsible users of voter-related information data obtained from HCAD and HCTAX and VoteTexas.

Happy Canvassing and VDVR-ing!

Interactive precinct map, which I found thru the HCTax Assessor's website

This work (including the XLS) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Five Easy Steps: Voting in 2018 in Texas

This year has been tough for Houston. Voting should be easy. 

Lots of folks have moved since the November 2016 -- because of Harvey, or because of... well, everything. If you moved within the same county, your voter registration may need to be updated by FEBRUARY 20 in order to vote in the upcoming March 6 primary... and you can do that online! Here are the five easy steps to make sure everything will be ready to go to cast your vote.

Step 1. Find your current voter registration.

In Harris County, the tax assessor is in charge of voter registration. You can find out where the HCTA thinks you live by searching for your name here -- https://www.hctax.net/Voter/Search -- it looks like the screenshot below. (For other Texas counties, check here to see which office to contact for your voter registration info.)

Screenshot of search bar at https://www.hctax.net/Voter/Search

Step 2. Check that the address is correct... 

Once you've found your name in the voter registration database, click on the BLUE certificate number to pull up...

Screenshot from the search for "PR, L" -- with people's identifying info erased. It's already public online but hey, this stuff is sensitive and I get that. 

... on your current Voter Registration record (Step 3). 

... your very own (yellow) Voter Registration record! Ta-dah! If your address is correct, then you're done. Screenshot the names of the people who represent you so you know who to pester. I didn't show those names in the image, but I promise you -- it's there if you scroll down on your own certificate. If your address is not correct, then you'll need to update it!

Step 4. If necessary, go to the state website to update your address. 

Write down your Voter Unique ID (VUID) in the top left box of your Voter Registration Record. You'll also need your Texas driver license or voter ID card. With those in hand, head on over to the Secretary of State website --https://txapps.texas.gov/tolapp/sos/SOSACManager -- and click CONTINUE at the bottom of the page.

Screenshot from the TX Office of the Secretary of State website

Step 5. Enter the information from your documents, and click LOGIN. 

The form on the SOS website looks like this. You'll need two numbers from your photo ID, and also your VUID from the County website. And then follow the prompts after LOGIN to complete your update. 

All done! Don't you feel better? Now you can complain all you want about anybody in government, heehee. Because in a democracy, if you can vote and you don't vote... nobody has to take your opinion seriously. 

Estimating Supply & Demand in PK4 Planning

As I have described earlier (here, and here), I am working on projection estimates for PK4 in MNPS. Given the limitations of a summer-only role and the many, many factors at play in the decisions, I do not know what role these estimates will ultimately play in the strategy around PK4 expansion. But I can at least feel confident that I am providing accurate and useful information around specific questions, namely: the (1) available supply and the (2) current unmet need for PK4 across the district and in each cluster, and (3) illustrate trends in each cluster’s distinct PK4 needs and assets. So! In the interest of sharing what I have learned thus far, here is a progress report of sorts.

Definitions:    I have already sought and obtained initial figures on each of these inputs, and am in the process of cleaning, re-organizing, and crunching the numbers so that I can pull them together in a meaningful way. 

1.     Demand = Number of students who applied for this year’s PK4 through MNPS, as organized by their zone of residence

2.     Need = Students who are projected to enroll in a MNPS zoned school for Kindergarten the following year (Proxy for PK4)

3.     Need Trend = Anticipated growth in Kindergarten enrollment over time, for each zoned school

4.     Public Supply, Total = PK4 slots currently available thru MNPS and Head Start, by cluster 

5.     Public Supply, EE = Public PK4 slots allocated exclusively for children receiving Exceptional Education services

6.     Private Supply = Slots currently provided by private entities, by cluster.

7.     Private "High-Quality" Supply = Slots that are provided by entities that are accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), or that are three-star providers as determined by the voluntary Star-Quality Child Care Program (determined by the TN Department of Human Services Child Care Services office).

8.     Accessibility = Characteristic of each school zone's residents, which indicates families' reliance on public transportation vs. private vehicles (aggregated at the census tract level, using the ACS package in R - about which I have a blog post under construction).

Assumptions:  Every child who attends a MNPS elementary for kindergarten is likely to consider enrolling in a MNPS PK4 classroom if it were available in their residential cluster. Therefore, it is appropriate to consider projected Kindergarten enrollment in AY1415 as an appropriate proxy for projected PK4 need in AY1314. 

Limitations:    (1) Analysis captures anticipated trends for zoned schools, rather than trends for schools of choice or specialty schools. (2) Although it is intended to reflect the reality that some parents will always choose to keep their 4-year-old at home or choose private providers rather than enroll them in public PK4, the distinction between Need and Demand seems a little bit fussy, and ultimately may not be useful. (3) This is a preliminary working construct of "high quality" and cannot, by definition, capture all the characteristics that make up a quality ECE experience. But we must start somewhere, and so we start with NAEYC and Three-Star.

Thoughts, questions, suggestions? Did I miss something really obvious? 

Childfind: Data and the 4YO children in Nashville (Part 1)

Well, this is going to be complicated.  

As I wrote at the outset of this project, one of the policy/planning questions that needs to be addressed is how many four-year-old children live in Davidson County? Generating a smart estimate has turned out to be more complex than I anticipated initially.

In short, no wonder nobody has tackled this process before!

Turns out, isn't really the responsibility of any one particular government entity to track children in this age cohort. Or, rather, lots of entities track some of these kiddos, but nobody tracks all of them. So I need to bring the relevant data together and build the model myself.

Initially, my plan was to (a) fit kindergarten enrollment numbers, by year and by school cluster, and then (b) use that model as a proxy for the number of five-year-old children who would have been eligible for four-year-old (universal, voluntary) pre-K had it been in place in the previous year. From this figure I could determine trend lines for PK need, and predict/forecast  But as I discovered, there are some characteristics of the data itself that will necessitate adjustments to the plan.

School Geography is a Cluster...

Before you scold me for the pun implied above, you need to know that MNPS is organized into twelve geographically delineated units called "clusters" -- a zoned high school, and its feeder elementary and middle schools. You can access the (updated as needed) cluster maps on the district website, but here is how the clusters were organized in AY1314(1):

Each of the clusters can include zoned and charter schools alike. If you open it in another window, you can zoom in, etc. The colors alone should give you a sense of how these clusters are jumbled across the county.