Who is Not a Geek?
Hi my name is Lori I had been working for the past 20 years I have been working within IT doing various types of IT support within the Corporate environment. After losing my job late 2020 I started to explore a career in Data Science as I needed to now work remotely due to a disability. Since then I have completed Data Science Certificates from Sheridan College and the University of Guelph, in addition to a few online courses. If you want to learn more about me you can check out my LinkedIn profile.
This project started last summer as a data science portfolio project with the goal of creating a portfolio exploring voter turnout. As I started to work with the public data from Elections Canada I discovered that there was a very wide range of voter turnout within electoral districts and was even more shocked to see differences of over 20% within large cities. This led me to start asking why, and if there are systematic flaws in our democracy that limits the ability of some citizens to cast their vote.
By the end of summer I had created a Dashboard exploring voter turnout for Canadian elections and started sharing it with people including some elected figures who said that they would actually pay for this type of information. This is when the idea to create an online portal to make this information more accessible was born.
While I am only one person I do believe that I can help improve civic engagement by providing clear and accurate information to those working within on the front lines to engage voters.