We are a voter list company. Every ten years new political boundaries are written for federal and state offices. All of the corresponding shapefiles are ESRI ready.
One of our clients is getting voter data from us and wanted to supplement it with shapefiles. We do not use ESRI ourselves nor do we understand the raw data and polygons as we are quite illiterate in this area---we simply are giving the raw ESRI data to an end user.
We sent the folder of shapefiles to a client who is also unschooled in ESRI and now they want to "see the Polygons". See sample data that we set the client at:
http://www.srrproject.org/resources/redistricting-shapefiles/#shapefiles-content.
My questions is the same as I posed to them: can they not "see the polygons" themselves from the shape data that we provided? Educate me on how these shapefiles are are to be employed.
NEW as of Oct 10: Hi @Kirk, @RyanDalton, @Rayner, @PROBERT, @Aaron, I understand this is all free advice here in this wonderful exchange but I want to say that if what I am asking is above and beyond free, we can discuss offline a small consultative gig for you by contacting us at: anne.horrigan@eMerges.com. But here is my specific challenge: The client has 50,000 complete addresses across the US. They want to link each address with its corresponding congressional, state senate and state house district. I am looking for step by step---aka, For Dummies--- instructions on how the client may accomplish this task on a regular basis using the shapefiles mentioned earlier. For example, what software, what to load, how to import & export.