[Discuss] keeping an eye on congress

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (Dan Ritter)]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 05:06:02PM -0500, Daniel C. wrote:
> I've considered launching a service (called something like Political
> Inaction) that does something like this.  You'd get regular digests
> that summarize the bills before your governing bodies (state,
> national, whatever) with links to more in-depth coverage.  Ideally
> there'd be articles behind the links with "balanced" for and against
> blurbs.  (I realize it's impossible to actually get anything written
> in this area that's really balanced.)  Then the person reading it
> could click the "for" or "against" box, and the summary of this
> information would be transmitted to the representative's office in a
> way that's useful to them.  Constituents could also get a summary of
> how their rep voted in relation to their preference - x% the same as,
> or different than, the constituent's preferences.
> 
> There are obviously a lot of problems with this - but it would be
> better than nothing, eh?  Hell, even an easily accessible list of
> votes made by your reps (which you could find just by putting in your
> zip code) would be a step in the right direction, and it wouldn't be
> too hard to put together.  Does anyone know where this information can
> be located?

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/megavote/

There you go. Everything except a different name.

-dsr-