Comment by DrScump | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrScump | Hacker News Reader

Actually, this title doesn't do the service justice -- it yields detail clear down to local offices and gives a detail '+' link for each to get details like contact information.

For example, this is what is returned for a given, random Sunnyvale, CA address; the lone change I would suggest is to have the county and then city offices listed last to maintain a sequence of decreasing granularity. Note that Sunnyvale is an example of at-large city council representation, so all are listed. Very nicely done!

Barack Obama President of the United States

Joseph R. Biden Vice-President of the United States

Michael M. Honda United States House of Representatives CA-17

Dianne Feinstein United States Senate

Barbara Boxer United States Senate

Edmund G. Brown Jr. Governor

Gavin Newsom Lieutenant Governor

Laurie Smith Sheriff

Lawrence E. Stone Assessor

Jeffrey Rosen District Attorney

Gustav Larsson City Council Member Seat 1

Glenn Hendricks City Council Member Seat 2

David Whittum City Council Member Seat 4

Pat Meyering City Council Member Seat 5

Jim Davis City Council Member Seat 6

Tara Martin-Milius City Council Member Seat 7

Jim Griffith Mayor and City Council Member Seat 3

John Chiang State Treasurer

Kamala D. Harris Attorney General

Betty T. Yee State Controller

Alex Padilla Secretary of State

Dave Jones Insurance Commissioner

Tom Torlakson State Superintendent of Public Instruction

> it yields detail clear down to local offices

It has city councils, but it doesn't have any local districts. In Sunnyvale, you are also being represented on at least the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District[1], the El Camino Health Care District[2], and the Santa Clara Valley Water District[3]. If you are curious how I figured this out, I went to the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation website, which has an interactive mapping tool[4].

[1] http://www.openspace.org/about-us/election-information

[2] https://www.elcaminohealthcaredistrict.org/governance

[3] http://www.valleywater.org/About/BoardOfDirectors.aspx

[4] http://www.santaclaralafco.org/maps

Why do so much work and post on HN instead of sending them a quick mail?

To be fair, chances are the website makers are going to go through every single Hacker news comment anyway.

We've been lurking...

Our address is secure@politiwatch.org

I don't think the people who make this website don't know this is a limitation, and I especially don't think that they have some database they are hand editing with new information I might provide on this thread: my comment and information (which also wasn't "so much work": it took a few minutes; I attended a couple years of meetings of the Santa Barbara LAFCO and so I know how this stuff all works) is only relevant in the context of this thread as a reply to the comment making the website sound more local than it really is?

Just as a heads up to people using this (and the creators), it also appears to be missing the thousands of elected school board members that make decisions for school districts

Having an exhaustively thorough scope of all elective offices, rather than the most-sought subset, magnifies the task tenfold or more, especially if that data isn't already available to them in their existing sources. Such critiques strike me as unduly harsh.

This is a great website, but the title claims to find "everyone" who represents you, but it doesn't. Its a good product decision to limit the scope, but the title needs to be clear about the limitations.

It is important that people know the breadth of government if only as a civil exercise.

If I'm ever pulled over in Sunnyvale (or anywhere) I can do a quick search with this site and then yell at the cop, "I pay your boss, Laurie Smith's salary!"

Then it's just a quick jump over to the ACLU's Know Your Rights page...

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights

Good luck with that! The side of the road is no place for yelling at or threatening cops.

Yeah that would probably not go well at all. However, there's no reason you can't have a polite conversation where you imply you know the sheriff personally. You can ask something like "How is Laurie doing?" and then something relevant like "My sister used to hang out with her in San Jose State" and "How are those new jail cameras working out? I heard she bought them herself! Wow!" just based off of Wikipedia [1] and some news articles [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Smith

[2] http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/02/santa-clara-coun...

Yeah, that might work, as a social engineering tactic to get out of a ticket.

Uh, only unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County (and those few cities who subcontract law enforcement to the county, like Cupertino) fall under Smith's direct purview. Like most cities, Sunnyvale has its own P.D. (Department of Public Safety, in Sunnyvale's case -- combined Police and Fire).

That said, the jurisdiction of any given sworn law enforcement officer in CA is statewide, so any officer could pull you over regardless of what city you're in, theoretically.

The info seems a bit out of date - Jim Griffith is no longer mayor and hasn't been so for about a year:

http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/CityGovernment/CityCouncil/Councilme...

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