Targeting county and municipal district offices with the Actions app – Soapbox Support Center

With the Actions app, you can target county board members and municipal council members by district, so each supporter is matched to the representative who serves their address. If your county or city was not previously available as a Predefined Target, it can often be added.

Why county and municipal districts work differently

Congressional and state legislative districts are mapped nationally and kept up to date in a consistent format, so Actions can match a supporter to those officials automatically anywhere in the United States.

County and municipal districts are different. They are drawn and published by thousands of individual local governments. There is no national standard for how they are shared, no single place they are collected, and no requirement that a jurisdiction publish them at all. As a result, automated district matching does not cover every county and city.

Soapbox can now use district boundary information supplied for a specific jurisdiction. Once that information is added, supporters in that county or city are matched to their district representative in exactly the same way as any other Predefined Target.

How this works between you and Soapbox Engage

Supporting a county or city is something we do together, because the two halves sit in different places.

You know your jurisdiction. You know where it publishes its district map, who currently holds each seat, and when something changes — a redistricting, a resignation, a new council member after an election. No national dataset tracks that as closely as the people working in the community.

We make it usable. We check that the district information can be read reliably, confirm it matches the right office, load it, and verify that supporters are matched to the correct representative. From then on it works like any other Predefined Target.

The part that keeps it accurate over time is you letting us know when the districts or the officeholders change. Local rosters change quietly, and an update from you is the fastest way for us to keep your supporters reaching the right person.

How to tell whether your jurisdiction is affected

Create a test Action targeting County Supervisor or Municipal Council Member, then submit an address in your jurisdiction on the front end.

If the correct representative appears, your jurisdiction is already supported and no further action is needed.
If you see "No targets are available for this action," the district information for that jurisdiction is not yet available and can be requested.

Requesting support for your county or city

Contact Soapbox Engage support with the following. You do not need to prepare files or extract anything — links are ideal, because your county or city knows its own boundaries best.

The jurisdiction, by name and state — for example, "Cook County, Illinois" or "City of Springfield, Missouri."
A link to the district map published by the jurisdiction. Most counties and cities publish their commissioner, supervisor or council district boundaries on a GIS, mapping or open data page on their official website. A link to that page is enough; we will take the correct format from it.
A link to the current list of officeholders, usually a "Board of Commissioners," "County Board" or "City Council" page listing each district with the member who serves it. If contact email addresses are published there, so much the better.
The office you want supporters to contact — county board or city council — so the district information is matched to the right Predefined Target.

If you cannot find a district map published by your jurisdiction, contact us anyway and tell us what you have. We can often locate it, and if it genuinely is not published we will tell you.

What happens next

We will review what the jurisdiction publishes and confirm whether the district information can be added. If it can, we will add it and let you know when your Action is ready to test. If it cannot, we will explain why and suggest an alternative, which is usually creating a Custom Target for the officials you want to reach.

Note: Not every jurisdiction publishes district boundaries in a usable form, and a small number do not publish them at all. Contacting us is the fastest way to find out which applies to yours.

Note: Supporters who enter a PO box cannot be matched to a district, because a PO box has no physical location. This applies to any district-based targeting, not only county and municipal offices. Supporters should enter a street address.

Important: Adding a jurisdiction affects only county and municipal district targeting. Actions targeting Congress, state legislatures, governors and lieutenant governors are unchanged, as are Custom Targets and Public Comment Targets.

Keeping district information current

District boundaries and officeholders change, and the sooner we hear about it the less disruption your supporters see.

When your jurisdiction redraws its districts, send us a link to the updated map. We will replace the previous boundaries so supporters are matched to the new districts.
When a representative changes — an election, a resignation, a mid-term appointment — send us a link to the updated roster page and we will refresh the contact details.

Published maps and rosters are not always updated promptly by the jurisdiction itself, and a district map can remain correct while the person holding the seat has changed. A quick note from you is usually the earliest signal we get.