Interactive map visualizes geography of bill sponsors

Some bills in the South Dakota Legislature divide legislators along ideological lines. Others are more a matter of loyalty to a lawmaker’s respective caucus. And some are geographic, pitting one region of the state against another.

Cody Winchester wrote a script to pull data from the South Dakota Legislature’s website into a spreadsheet. Then, with help from Cody and Chris Keller, I coded this interactive Google Map to let users pick a bill from a menu and filter the map to display the official home addresses of that bill’s sponsors.

So some bills involve rural vs. urban lawmakers. Some involve western vs. eastern interests. Some are dominated by a particular region.

Others, of course, have no geographic basis whatsoever.

Click the image to go to the interactive map.