They're already working with one political candidate:

https://pdap.atlassian.net/browse/PDAP-149

You have linked to a message saying:

“Any chance you guys have data on NJ? I'm running for office there and was looking to get some police misconduct data to double check a couple things”

It is not clear how this means that they are working with a political candidate, or what that means to you.

Can you explain what conclusions you are drawing from this message?

From their slack, a political candidate posted that they were interested

One of two of their volunteer scrapers said that he would drop his work in California to work on New Jersey instead.

I guess "working with" is bad language, though "interested in dropping other work in favor of requests by political candidates" is more accurate.

Providing data to people who want it seems like the reason the project exists, so it seems natural for them to respond to users asking for data.

It’s not clear to me how you think this relates to their claim: “Are you affiliated with a political party or have a political agenda?“

I can see why others would disagree with me here, but I personally see no difference between having party affiliation and having 50% of your relevant volunteers doing work that helps a politician achieve their goals.

It seems reasonable to assume that 100% of their work will help politicians achieve their goals. Data on NJ was clearly already part of their plan.

I don’t see how this has anything to do with party affiliation. Can you explain how it does?

As far as I can tell, you're being intentionally uncharitable. There's a difference between doing work in isolation that a politician uses for their own political goals and doing work that specifically and intentionally helps a politician on their request.

If you were to drop all of your ongoing side projects to work with a political candidate that asked for your help, would you really try to argue that you're not at least somewhat tied to that candidate?

> As far as I can tell, you're being intentionally uncharitable.

I just don’t see how the posted ticket supports your claim. So far it seems like innuendo rather than evidence.

> If you were to drop all of your ongoing side projects to work with a political candidate that asked for your help, would you really try to argue that you're not at least somewhat tied to that candidate?

Yes, but that’s not what is happening here.

They aren’t working with anyone, and providing data on NJ is as much a primary goal of their project as providing data on CA.

It is possible that they have a party affiliation or bias but responding to a publicly visible data request from a candidate doesn’t seem to provide any evidence for that.

> If you were to drop all of your ongoing side projects to work with a political candidate that asked for your help, would you really try to argue that you're not at least somewhat tied to that candidate?

Not if they were willing to do so regardless of the candidate's party or political agenda.

I can take a stab at it, there are potentially political motives to why a politician might want data that would bolster the perception of police misconduct.

Of course, but that’s an inevitable use of this data, and is about the politician not the project.

"Working with" feels like a loaded phrase. Someone created that ticket requesting that data 14 minutes ago, and the ticket has yet to even be assigned to anyone (at the time of my post). I'm not sure how you can conflate this project's lack of a response to a request as "already working with".

A political candidate asked for help accessing some data, not the same thing as affiliating with a political party.