How Many Elected Officials???

I’ve been researching this election server idea I previously wrote about. and few days ago. I’m not going to change it but I got some feedback from a political data guy about election complexity as it relates to National, State, and Local elections.

There are over 519,000 elected officials in the United States. Most are at the local (city / county) levels, but there are also about 20K at the state level., and about 500 at the federal level. I previously covered these stats (thanks Pew Research) in the white paper.

According to the unnamed ‘him,’ modeling election districts at the lower levels is really complicated think: city, county, municipal government officials in small town America that make up the ~ 500,000 elected officials. That’s complicated.

Based on what I’m thinking right now, it’s probably better to start with a single election (President / VP) or maybe President / VP and US House / Senate. basically, starting with the 535 elected offices at the National Level.