A. Website- The navigation bar on the left of the website contains a "data" button, which takes the user to a data serving interface. This interface is designed to help the user find particular data files from the large collection of files the database serves. Begin by choosing either a coverage type (COUNTY, AD, SD, or CD) or an election. Next click on the button to the right of the selection. The web server will produce a long list of files conforming to this initial selection. Now you may restrict you search criteria using the various criteria presented in the top half of the page; Simply choose whatever specific criteria you are looking for and click on the "go" button --- the list of associated files will become shorter as the selection criteria become narrower. For example, if you want data from Assembly District 28, for the 1992 general election, select AD28 from the bottom center selection box and 1992 general from the top left box, and all files conforming to these criteria will show up. For each file in the list, you may view the codebook or download the file via ftp or http.
B. FTP Server- Once you are logged into your account, type ftp statewidedatabase.org. Type anonymous at the prompt for the username. Then you will be asked for a password, for which you should type your account name and server, for example, [email protected]. If you have successfully logged in, you will see a brief message describing the FTP site. The data is contained in numerous subdirectories of pub/data. Change to a subdirectory by typing 'cd <directory>', and go up to a parent directory with 'cdup' or 'cd ..' Once successfully logged into the cain server, you can see the available directories by using the list command, ls. Download a file by typing 'get <filename>'. 'bye' will terminate your ftp session.