A number of Internet sites exist to help you influence your representatives and evaluate how well they are representing you. I'd like to build a single Knowledge Center that mines data from multiple relevant sites to generate comparative and analytical displays of the data and makes it available in a single site, a citizen's portal to the known .
There are many organizations that publish rankings of our representatives. To the right, for example is an extract of grades published by Americans for Prosperity; it is a list of Senators who received a grade of "F" for their voting records (so far) in the 110th Congress (January 3, 2007 to January 3, 2009). Below, are the Senators listed on the 2007 National Taxpayer's Union list of "Tax-payer Friends".
At these two sites, grades are determined by the representatives' voting records on "Key Votes", votes relevant to issues they advocate.
Many sites focus in on their own uniquely determined set of key votes for an area of interest. You can also get information on how each member of Congress voted, if they voted, on specific issues or bills related to your own specific interests. One great site to do your own research is Project Vote Smart (not to be confused with Project Vote); this is a site produced by the work of thousands of conservatives and liberals who are "sickened by the manipulative tactics of modern candidates".... life myself.
It is hard to keep up with all that's going on and, in my view, a vigilant citizenry has never been more important. If I had a magic wand, I'd have that portal built, with an intuitively easy meta-view to all the known sources of data, an easy way to get just the info we need just when we need it, easy to understand summaries and comparative analyses of the data that's out there, and drill-down and download capability for those (like myself) who like to dance with the data themselves. In the meanwhile, I find that Project Vote Smart provides the closest match to what I'd like to see in my dream CyberCitizen Portal. In fact, I like their site so much, I think I'll share more on what they do in my next Blog.
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