# WhoGoverns — public data

Who governs every county in the United States: what kind of government each one
has, and — where a state's roster has been collected — who currently holds each
office.

**Released into the public domain under CC0.** No attribution required, though
it is appreciated. See LICENSE.

Regenerate with `wg build && wg dump` from
<https://github.com/belgradGoat/WhoGoverns>.

## Files

Every file is UTF-8, sorted, and deterministic — rebuilding from unchanged
sources produces byte-identical output, so `git diff` between two versions
shows exactly which records changed.

| File | Rows | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| `divisions.csv` | 3,196 | Every county and county-equivalent |
| `demographics.csv` | 3,144 | Population per division |
| `governments.csv` | 3,144 | Form of government, board size, home-rule status, official website |
| `offices.csv` | 42,141 | Seats that exist, and whether they are elected |
| `people.csv` | 36,619 | Officeholders |
| `terms.csv` | 42,141 | Who holds which seat, until when, and the office's website |
| `contacts.csv` | 65,998 | How to reach an office — post, phone, email |
| `CHECKSUMS.txt` | — | SHA-256 of every file above |

The canonical JSON lives alongside this bundle in `../data/`, under the same
licence. It carries two things CSV cannot: nested fields (`row_offices`) and
`counties.topo.json`, the county boundaries for mapping. `../data/coverage.json`
says, state by state, what each source covers.

## Joining

Everything joins on **`geoid`**, the 5-digit state+county FIPS code. Offices and
terms join on `office_id`; terms and people on `person_id`.

Keep `geoid` as **text**. `01001` is Autauga County, Alabama, and a spreadsheet
that reads it as a number turns it into `1001`, which is nothing.

## What to know before trusting a number

- **Officeholders cover Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming only.** Other states have
  divisions and government structure but no names yet.
- **Form of government, board size, and home-rule status are 2017
  vintage** — the most recent machine-readable release. These change only by
  charter adoption, but they are not live figures. Every record says so in
  `source_vintage`.
- **Term-end dates depend on the state.** Oregon publishes them as years;
  California publishes none at all, so its terms carry no expiry.
- **`selection_method` is usually a state legal default**, not a per-county
  verified fact — `selection_method_source` says which. `varies_by_county`
  means state law lets each county choose and the source does not record the
  choice.
- **Contact points attach to a government or a seat, never to a person.**
  `contacts.csv` carries a mailing address for every county government in the
  country, addressed to a role rather than a name; phone numbers and email
  addresses exist only where a state publishes them, which today means
  California and Oregon. `is_official_domain` is false on an email the office
  publishes that is not a government mailbox.
- **`website_url` is always the official site of an *office*,** never a
  campaign or personal page. On `governments.csv` it is the county
  government's own site, from the Census listing, present for roughly three
  counties in four. On `terms.csv` it is populated for members of Congress and
  governors only: no source publishes a website for an individual county
  officeholder, and none is guessed from a hostname pattern.
- **Nothing here is padded.** A blank means the source did not say. What each
  source covers, state by state, is in `../data/coverage.json`.

## Vintages

| Layer | Vintage |
|---|---|
| Boundaries | Census 2025 |
| Government units | Census 2025 |
| Population | Census 2025 |
| Government structure | NACo 2017 |