Middle Township was incorporated in the late 18th century as one of the first 104 New Jersey townships, located in South Jersey near the southernmost point. Cape May Court House is a small town inside of Middle Township, where my mom and aunts, my grandparents before them, and my cousins now, have all grown up, have gone to school, and have owned businesses. I’ve spent a significant part of my childhood and adult life in Middle. I have a strong connection to this place, but I’m not actually from there (I’m from Philadelphia), so I wanted to better understand it, and other small (rural, East Coast, American) towns in the United States like it. This started as a deep dive into Middle Township, which turned into a study on small town politics through the lens of Middle and its history, its people, everything. It’s still a study on politics, but is also an exploration of data visualization and how these different modes of presenting information can determine how someone approaches it, and how that can change and influence the way that people view this place. So far, I have done this in six ways: census drawings, hole punched election results, a Facebook photo municipal directory, conversations, collection of business cards, and hand drawn maps.