README.CD

Notes on reverse engineering the vote information received from Stortinget
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The vote data files are available from
<URL: http://www.nuug.no/pub/stortingsinnsyn/stortinget-voteringer-135-153/ >.

Each vote consist of two files.  The *.R# files list the votes, and
the *.# files include the individual votes.  For example OK10S1.153
and OK10S1.R03 have the voting information for the 153th parlament, day
10 (kartnr) case 1 (saksnr). (Not sure what the R03 part represent)

The *.R* files contain a long line with the voters IDs, names and
party.  The charset seem to be IBM PC Codepage 865 from 1990 to 1999
(session 144, to and including day 12), and ISO-8859-1 after this
time.

The early data sets (at least session 135), consist of 4 columns.

Some of the data set is actually two columns of names.  The first two
bytes in the file (two spaces) should be skipped, and then a new line
should be inserted every 70 bytes to see the columns.  When this
splitting is done, the result will look like this:

Aust-Agder                         Hordaland
   1: F. de Ruiter           A       49: O. Akselsen            A
   2: I. Skårmo              FRP     50: A. Sortevik            FRP
   3: I. Løite               A       51: E. Solberg             H
   4: Å. G. Woie Duesund     KRF     52: P. R. Henriksen        A
                                     53: G. Hagesæter           FRP
Vest-Agder                           54: I. S. Sørfonn          KRF
   5: H. Skumsvoll           FRP     55: *****

The name of the parlament bench (Aust-Agder etc) is listed above the
set of members on that bench.

The *.# files contain a long line with individual votes following an
initial time stamp.  The time stamp is in norwegian local time.  This
is an shortened example (cut at ...):

18:50:08FMFF-F-----M----F---...

The 'M' means voted against, while the 'F' means voted for the
proposal.  '-' means no vote were casted.  The ordering seem to be
according to seat ID (the number in front of the colon in the list of
voters.

There are three extra votes (172, should be 169).
According to Arild Øverby from Stortinget they represents the president,
the secretary, and a special handicap spot.