California Election 2022 Data Challenge

Challenge Overview

Data Science + Civic Engagement

California voters are presented with several ballot initiatives each election year. These propositions are an important way for Californians to shape the future of our state.

But, many voters say there are too many of them and that they’re too complicated and confusing to understand. Voters also often worry about their ability to make an informed decision. The UC Davis DataLab runs Election Data Challenges to leverage public data to help us understand each election’s ballot initiatives, grow our data science community, and encourage participation in the civic process.

For the CA 2022 Election Data Challenge, participants working in teams of two or more selected one of the November 8th, 2022 California ballot initiatives and, using at least one publicly available dataset, created a project culminating data visualizations that explored or analyzed an aspect of the issue. Multiple teams could choose to work on the same ballot initiative, but each team must have had their own unique research question and project.

The 2022 Challenge built upon DataLab’s “PropFest 2018” and “CA 2020 Election Data Challenge,” where successful projects included pursuits that:

• Analyzed potential impacts of a proposed initiative on specific regions, sectors, and/or populations;
• Tracked and summarized the historical development of a proposition, including its supporters and opponents;
• Uncovered trends in public response to the issue; and
• Fact-checked rhetoric or claims on both sides of the debate.

DataLab provided support in helping match participants into teams and get started on their projects. We also hosted weekly open work sessions, technical office hours, and mentor Q&A sessions (see detailed Timeline, below). By October 24th all competing teams uploaded a short (< 10 minute) video presentation of their project and data visualization(s) (along with the link to the project’s public GitHub repository that includes a readME and brief report) to a Virtual Showcase which ran asynchronously on Slack from October 25th-26th. All teams were encouraged to submit their project (even if unfinished), review each other’s visualizations, and offer helpful, supportive, and constructive comments and questions. By observing the progress of the other teams, participants not only grew their network and skill set, but also gained insights to help improve their final project. The most collegial individuals also won a prize!

Judges from DataLab and across the University reviewed all submissions. Selected finalists received additional mentorship and won up to $500 as well as the opportunity to present their project to the broader campus community at an online public Symposia on Monday, November 7th (5-7pm). 

Prizes

Anyone affiliated with the UC Davis and wider UC community is invited to participate on a team. In past years we’ve had teams composed of undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff and even high school students engage in the Data Challenge. Prizes are only awarded to teams whose project focuses on an issue relating to a single initiative on the November 8th, 2022 CA ballot. Only current UC Davis students and postdoctoral scholars are eligible to win monetary prizes; teams without a lead who is a current UC Davis student or postdoc are welcome to submit a project to earn a certificate of participation and win swag packs.

Prior team prize categories have included:

• Most accessible
• Most innovative
• Most data-licious

Individual prizes are also awarded to the participants who demonstrate great collegiality, perseverance, and high engagement throughout the Data Challenge. This includes providing helpful and supportive feedback and resources to other participants and teams on the Slack workspace, during the Showcase, and during other Challenge-related activities.

Expectations

The goal of the Data Challenge is to support data literacy and explore data visualization applications to promote quantitatively informed civic dialogue. The emphasis of this challenge is on the process of working with data to uncover insights and provide an experience for applying data science to address real-world challenges. Projects and data visualizations can encompass anything related to the ballot initiative, but this challenge will not support political agendas. The goal is not to convince people how to vote, but to help yourself and the wider community understand how to use data to investigate civic topics including the ballot initiatives.

Full transparency of the data, code, outputs, and interpretations is expected from all participants. In addition:

• Projects must use at least one publicly available dataset.
• All data visualizations must be reproducible. 
• All projects must include a summary report and detailed documentation.

Teams must provide access to all materials used to produce their data visualization through a public GitHub repository. Best practices are expected for the organization of the repository, which should include all data, code, and outputs, along with a detailed readME explaining the files and links to the source datasets. 

For both the Showcase and Symposia presentations, teams should explain their data visualization, and highlight the process used for its development. Template slides will be provided to all registered teams. At a minimum, presentations should include: 

• Brief overview of the issue (your the research question) and its relevance for the given ballot initiative;
• Where and how the data were obtained;
• What tools, technologies, and techniques were used to analyze and visualize the data;
• How they interpreted those findings;
• What the data illuminates about a given issue pertaining to the ballot initiative;
• Limitations of the source data or resulting visualization for understanding the issue

This Challenge provides an opportunity to learn and practice the process of developing a data science project. For the Showcase and Symposia, teams are encouraged to share any challenges they faced developing the project, how they overcame those challenges, and ask for suggestions and advice from others.

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