[m2fkxy]

> A side effect of the geometry simplication is that there are some very small gaps between states. Based on your use case, you'll need to handle the case of the point not being within any state borders. In these rare cases, you could fall back to a different method, such as distance checking centroid points, adding an episilon to all state borders, or simply asking the user. (The user may also be in another country or in the ocean...)

This is a common topic and easily dealt with by working with topology-informed geometries; most simplification algorithms support topology handling between different features. For instance, TopoJSON can be used.

[wodenokoto]

This sounds like one of those “easy if you’ve learned it”. I dabble with GIS at work, so in some sense I am a pro at this, and I don’t know how topology easily deals with this.

But I’d like to know!

[m2fkxy]

That's true. I have a bias of having part of my formal education quite focused on geospatial topics. Seeing non-geospatial folks reinventing wheels taught in GIS 101 both makes me smile and grimace thinking that we have have been doing something wrong with basic tools and aspects of the trade not being wider known.

You can look into TopoJSON here: https://github.com/topojson/topojson And a good general introduction to topology in GIS setting is nicely found in QGIS documentation: https://docs.qgis.org/3.40/en/docs/gentle_gis_introduction/t...