I found more than a thousand errors in the course of parsing the online version of California's legal codes. At first, I thought there might be something wrong with my parsing algorithms -- I had, indeed, gone through a number of rounds of bug-fixing. These repeated sections were carried over to the site I've published (calaw.tabulaw.com). Having parsed the sections, it would take just a few minutes to clean up the duplicates, but just to make sure I looked back at the California legislature's website.
When I looked at the original data on the California legislature's website, I saw the sections repeated verbatim. I've collected the 1,368 repeated sections (about 2%), and most look like errors in California's original conversion from print to electronic document.
Want to see for yourself? Check out these sample sections:
- Government Code, sections 11347. (a) & (b)
- Vehicle Code, section 23152
- Penal Code Section 1170, repeated 4 times
Ý1084.] Section Ten Hundred and Eighty-four. The writ of mandamusmay be denominated a writ of mandate.