13 Comments - Cincinnatus - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 9:25 am: http://www.theslowskys.com/home/ - Anonimo - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 9:27 am: Conceptually - very cool. But other than that I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I think because these maps take forever to load and I have things to do. I’m on Google Chrome on a relatively new computer. I can see these maps giving folks on a slower internet connection serious issues. - Cincinnatus - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 9:28 am: This is an awful presentation of the maps. The district lines are blurry and cover most of the map when displayed at 98%, at least on my Mac. Just give me .pdfs, dammit. #epicfail - wordslinger - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 9:38 am: It just re-enforces to me how remarkably big and diverse the state is. A major world metro with a concentrated population in the northeast, and a lot of medium and small towns and country everywhere else. I think the time is right for a trip to Savanna and Mississippi Palisades while the weather is still good. Maybe White Pines and Lowden on the way back. - Tom B. - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 9:38 am: This is bad mostly because it didn’t need to be done this way! The House Dems did the work of getting the congressional maps and the State House maps into google. Google, you know, that thing everybody uses. All they had to do was convert the State Senate maps, post all three of them together on a page, and call it a day! Instead I have to restart firefox in 32 bit (which I don’t even know what that means) so it can run microsoft silverlight or open it in safari and wait 15 minutes for it to load. Fail. - Pot calling kettle - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 9:51 am: It is slow, but it works fine on my MacBook. Zooming in to see the details of the boundaries is very nice. However, as mentioned above, this stuff is already available on GoogleEarth, and faster in that program. What could be done & should be done is to use the GIS function to its fullest extent by tying in data. Click on a district and get the name of the current state rep and senator (and their disclosure reports), get the results of the last election by precinct, after filing we should be able to pull up anyone who has filed (and their disclosure reports). The power of a GIS program is the link between the geospatial information and related data. For example, the USEPA has this site: http://www.epa.gov/emefdata/em4ef.home When you click on a site, you are linked to data! Welcome to the 21st century! - Randy Fritz - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:03 am: The Board of Elections maps are terrible. As you zoom in, the lines don’t become any more distinct–the 17th, for instance, includes part of Peoria, and there’s NO WAY, near the edges, to see where the specific lines are. - Tommy Ryan - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:03 am: I agree with the above. Too slow and not necessary. Senate version is fine. - Randy Fritz - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:10 am: Also, with the Board of Elections maps: in spite of options to click away districts, the map always shows all districts: Congress, Ill. Senate and Ill. House. Confusing. Google maps: Ill. House districts ONLY. Google Earth: Ill. Senate districts ONLY. It’s early though. In fairness, we should wait a while for final maps. I hope the Bd. of Elections again does what they did in 2001: superimposes district lines on faded Ill. Road maps and prints them. I know that’s expensive–I’d be willing to pay to receive a set. - Been There - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:12 am: I thought it works fine. I like the way you can easily toggle on/off the fed/senate/house districts. I have an older PC laptop and it actually works better for me than the google. If you let the dust settle a few seconds the lines appear to be spot on. - Shore - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:22 am: the one on their website with the purple oranage and red lines takes an absurdly long time. In 2011 this should not take this long. I also hope the folks doing election returns are working ot to improve their websites as well. - Boone Logan Square - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:28 am: I have way too much work to do to play with these new toys today. Must back away from the links now… - Avy - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 7:38 pm: Slow, but worth the wait. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.