Updates to Seat Numbers for Nonstandard State Legislature Districts

	ON THIS PAGE ShowHide Standard vs. Nonstandard Districts Updates to State Legislature Districts with Position Updates to State Legislature Districts with Unconventional Names

Note
For brevity, examples are provided in XML. Updates in JSON match the XML updates.

Standard vs. Nonstandard Districts

The U.S. House and most state legislatures use the standard district naming convention, which includes the word “District” and the district number; for example, “District 2.” Elections API returns the district name in the SeatName field in XML and seatName field in JSON in the Elections response. The SeatNum field in XML and seatNum field in JSON contain the district number (for example, 2); alphanumeric values (for example, 2B) are not allowed. However, in two groups of states, the state legislature district names differ from the standard naming convention.

Updates to State Legislature Districts with Position

State legislature districts in Washington and Idaho include true position in addition to the district number in the district name (for example, "District 3 - Position 1"). In both states, each legislative district elects two State House members in two separate, concurrent elections. For example, Idaho State Representatives 35A and 35B are elected in the same boundaries, by the same people, at the same time. The Position (A and B in this example) designates that the jurisdictional boundaries of a district are the same, but members are being elected in separate elections.

For both Washington and Idaho State House, Elections API now returns the new Position field in XML (position in JSON).
For Idaho State House, Elections API now returns the district number instead of "0" in the SeatNum field value in XML (seatNum in JSON).

Example 1: Washington State House District 3 Position 1

Example 2: Idaho State House District 35 Position B

Updates to State Legislature Districts with Unconventional Names

State Legislature districts in this group of states have place names and/or alphanumeric characters in the district names (for example, "2nd Barnstable," "Chittenden-Southeast," "Hillsborough District 2," "District 2A," "District C").

The state legislatures with unconventional names include:

Alaska (AK) State Senate
Massachusetts (MA) State House and State Senate
Maryland (MD) House of Delegates
Minnesota (MN) State House
New Hampshire (NH) State House
Vermont (VT) State House and State Senate

Additionally, both North Dakota (ND) and South Dakota (SD) State Houses have a few such districts as well, while their remaining districts are standard.

In each of these states, the state legislature districts with unconventional names are now assigned a seat number between 501 and 720. Elections API returns this seat number in the SeatNum field in XML and seatNum field in JSON. For a list of values, see List of Seat Numbers for State Legislature Districts with Unconventional Names.