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Find My Legislator by Address FAQ
Find By Address FAQ
District boundaries are defined by latitude/longitude pairs. Imagine a polygon placed on top of a map. The lines of the polygon are the lines of a particular district and are defined by latitude/longitude points. The more points defining the polygon boundary lines, the more precise the boundary lines are. For example, District 1 for the House of Representatives contains 2,216 latitude/longitude pairs that define the district boundaries.
Geocoding is a process used to find the latitude/longitude for a particular location. When you enter your postal address, the latitude/longitude is determined, and this result is then used to see which district it is within. (Remember that the district boundaries are defined by latitude/longitude points.)
For the geocoding process to be precise, a full postal address must be entered. If all that is entered is just a zip code, then the geocoding process is going to get the latitude/longitude for the center (approximately) of that zip code area. Furthermore, a district may be within multiple zip codes or may not include the entire zip code.
The application being used for this service is Google Maps. Google provides the tools to perform the geocoding process. For some addresses, maybe because they were recently created, we cannot get a latitude/longitude to perform the district lookup. Also, sometimes the request to Google will fail; if this happens please try again later.
As in the above, the geocoding process could not find the exact address to return a latitude/longitude. However, in this case it may have used your zip code or city name and then returned the latitude/longitude point for the center of that area. That center point may not be your district.