Special sessions

[bycoffe]

It appears that most of the term start/end dates in the historical file are based on normal sessions, not special sessions. Is there a reason not to use special sessions (when they don't occur between regular sessions)?

Aside from not capturing the full extent of some terms, leaving out special sessions can, in some cases, omit a member's term completely: if they served for a portion of the special session but then resigned/died before the first regular session (see Salmon P. Chase for one example)

[JoshData]

The dates should (ideally) be from swearing-in until the end of the constitutional term (or death/resignation).

When I created the historical data, I used the start date of the first session and the end date of the last session --- and I would have thought I would have included special sessions since I think I had that info. But I can't remember for sure.

In #305 I (thought I) corrected all of the end dates to be the constitutional end of term., so there shouldn't be any issues with the end dates now unless I got that wrong

[bycoffe]

The end dates appear to be fine. The issue is mostly with start dates, for terms when there was a special session before the first regular session. sessions.tsv does include special sessions, listed with an A in the session field, but it looks like the term start dates in legislators-historical.yaml are based on the start of the first regular session, even if there was a special session before the first regular session.

For example, in the 2nd Congress, there was a special session on 1791-03-04. The first regular session began 1791-10-24. The term start date listed in legislators-historical.yaml for most members is 1791-10-24.

Bioguide lists those members as "serving" starting 1791-03-04 (example); I'm not sure if there's any source for official swearing-in dates.

[JoshData]

Ahha. So this can probably be fixed easily the way I did the end dates by just doing text substitutions, e.g. for each Congress where there was a special session before the first regular session replace all of the start dates that correspond to the start of the first regular session with the start date of the first special session.

[bycoffe]

OK, great. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I'm happy to handle the changes (unless you'd prefer to).

[JoshData]

Go for it. :)