Follow up on Washington database dump date discrepencies.

[ghing]

Originally reported in #145.

The dates in the results database dump don't seem to match up with the dates entered in the dashboard.

• Wrong date in database dump for 2000 general election. Dump says 2000-11-04. Should be 2000-11-07
• Wrong date in database dump for 2000 September primary. Dump says 2000-09-01, should be 2000-09-19
• Wrong date in database dump for 2001 general election. Dump says 2001-11-01. Should be 2001-11-06
• Wrong date in database dump for 2004 general election. Dump says 2004-11-09. Should be 2004-11-02
• Wrong date in database dump for 2004 primary election. Dump says 2004-09-21. Should be 2004-09-14.

I emailed Nick Pharris, Elections Information Specialist of the Elections Division, Office of the Secretary of State to check about the election date discrepancies on 2014-05-30.

[ghing]

Emailed Nick Pharris again on 2014-08-25.

[ericlagergren]

He does answer phone calls at 360-725-5774.
I've spoken with him before about issues in the voter registration database.
Another idea would be to tweet @secstatewa about the issue. They've been great about getting back to me really quickly.

[ghing]

I called Nick to follow up on this issue and got him on the phone. I re-sent the email describing the issue and he said he would take a look and get back to me.

[ghing]

I got an email from Nick saying that the dates were indeed incorrect and that he requested that the maintainer of the database fix the dates. I asked if he could send us a new dump once the dates were fixed.

[ghing]

Nick replied:

I’ve asked for one, but that department is short-handed at the moment, so it may be a little while.

[ghing]

Nick sent me an updated export of the Elections table and I confirmed that the dates were correct. The date format is different between the two dumps, so I'll have to update the parser and re-export the files.