VoteDenton.org – Finding Your Council District Just Got Easy
A couple weeks back, I put out a call to local web designers, coders, and data-heads to lend their skills to a noble cause: make citizen involvement easier in Denton. With a city election season upon us where district-specific seats are on the ballot, knowing which city council district you live in is the first step to paying attention to the race and getting engaged.
Which city council district do you live in? It seems like a simple question and it seems as if there should be an easy way to answer it. But as I describe here, things are much more complicated. If the basis of our form of democratic government is representation, it seems to me that we have a responsibility to make it easy for people to find out who their representatives are.
About a dozen of our best and brightest citizens responded to my challenge and gathered for a couple evenings in my home to help tackle this problem. The result…
Not only can you easily find your council district, you can begin your exploration of the candidates for this year’s city council election as well as find out more information on how to vote. This is a work-in-progress, so more info and tools will be added soon.
This is a profound step for Denton in many ways. This is just one of the many collaborative efforts birthed out of last Fall’s Denton Creatives Mixer and made possible by the emergence of CreateDenton.com (the collaborative platform created Darren Smitherman, Patrick Daly, and Andrew Lewis, also contributors to VoteDenton.org). It is a demonstration of what can happen when innovative technological solutions are sought for civic problems. It also points to the value and possibilities of open data for a city like Denton. By highlighting the density of creative tech talent within our city, it makes an important economic development point: Denton is quickly becoming the region’s leader for fostering an environment of innovation.
Just think what else we can do to innovate government in Denton, TX…
Here are the rock stars who made this happen:
Darren Smitherman – Design
Adam Krawiec – Development
Kyle Taylor – Development
Devin Taylor – Data
Jet Regan – Planning
Patrick McLeod – Development
2 Comments
Having lived here for just over one year, something like this would be incredibly helpful to get more plugged in to the creative community here in Denton and get to know this town better. I’m from a small/big town like Denton in Wisconsin (Eau Claire) where we had something similar to this back home that showcased writers, designers, artists, musicians, poets, events, and articles from locals. It started small and now they publish a free magazine every two weeks, they have their own local store with local goods to buy and they have a great website. I’m glad Denton has started to think about the bigger picture, I love that and I’m glad to hear that you’re so supportive of this. All the best!
Here’s their website (from back home) if you need any future ideas:
http://www.volumeone.org
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