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In attempting to create a simple mass mailing, what I thought would be straightforward turned out to be very tricky: Providing a recipient with his/her elected officials.

It seems actual election districts in NC are determined by US Census Blocks. I suspect this is the case in other states as well.

In some cases, these do not correlate cleanly with Zip+4 carrier routes from the US Postal Service. Hence the issue.

I chased multiple people at the NC Board of Elections and the NC General Assembly. Turns out that the Board of Elections tracks voters only. The NC Leg had the data I needed.

What should have been a no-brainer turned out tricky. In speaking with the NC Leg's data person, the only approach that could work is providing functionality that utilizes election district polygons (these are available) and establishing a user's latitude and longitude based on their address. Then determining what district it is in...very tricky.

The goal is to map external membership data to provide an elected officials profile and contact info.