August 2010
2 posts
Scores from Amendment Votes, too
As of tonight, VoteReports allows report creators and interest groups to add amendments to a report’s legislative agenda. After all, amendments can make a major impact on the ultimate effect of a bill.
To add an amendment to the report, just use the bill finder to search for your bill:
Any bill that has related amendments will have a link next to it “(amendments)”. Click...
Interest Groups can Love (and hate) Bills
Right this moment, we have hundreds of interest group report cards, based on their ratings over the years. But there are real limitations to these report cards so far.
Immediacy: Probably the worst problem is that the interest groups only release ratings every year or two, at best, which means we go long stretches of time without knowing how are reps are really doing out there in D.C.,...
June 2010
2 posts
What's in a Term?
As we constantly refine and expand on VoteReports, one of the things I’ve had my eye on is terms on the politician page. Take, for instance, good ol’ Chuck:
Chuck’s had a busy few decades, running for office again and again non-stop from the time he was straight out of law school, a sprightly young 23 year old state legislator. The trouble is, we haven’t even included...
May 2010
1 post
Historical Charts & Histories
Some of the most fun we have on this site is adding new visual goodies for making it easier to know.
Tonight, we added our first charts to the site. In this case, historical charts for interest group ratings:
Every interest group report score (e.g. 29%, in the example above) is built on a whole set of historical ratings that interest group has given. We smooth out the edges and summarize...
April 2010
3 posts
Know Thy District
Do you know which congressional district is yours? It wasn’t long ago that I didn’t. But in plenty of cases, your zip code might overlap with several congressional districts. So how do you know then which of them is yours?
We decided to address this by making it easy for you to see your district. Now, when you see a politician, as always we list the state or a congressional...
Find Politicians by City
Historically on VoteReports, there were just 2 ways to search for politicians by location. You could enter your zip code, or you could enter your state.
Now this is good for a lot of folks, but it’s not quite easy enough. What if I don’t know the zip code? Or I’m curious about how another town down the road is represented? What about seeing all the representatives for my one...
VoteReports is back up...
We’ve had some downtime over the past 24 hours, due to pushing out some great new features which exposed some underlying problems. Things should be working now, so you can check out the new features: Interest Groups, and Interest Group Reports thanks to data from fellow travelers Project Vote Smart.
February 2010
10 posts
Looking Forward, and A Call to Action
Looking over this list of new features, we’re thrilled with all the progress we’ve seen, and we’re excited to think of all the possibilities to be covered between now and November. Trust us, we’ve got big plans!
But we’re not perfect, and we know there are lots of ways to make VoteReports easier to use and more helpful. If you have one, don’t keep it to...
1 tag
A Month of New Features!
As you may have noticed, VoteReports has come a long way in the past few weeks! Just to mark our progress, we have a whole series of what we’ve been up to.
2010: Informed with Ease
Why exactly do we collect, analyze, and share more data on baseball than on our own government? To some degree, it’s a combination of interest and ease. Bonus prediction, an easy one: It will be much easier to collect, analyze, and share government information in 2010-12 than it was in 2009.
- Mark Drapeau
January 2010
2 posts
VoteReports is back in the open
The maintenance took a good bit longer than expected, but then we’re new to this and learning. In any case, the site is updated, and with this you should be seeing much more frequent updates from us.
A few of the updates:
Reports without scores now tell you why they don’t have any scores. The most common being that your selected bills haven’t been voted on. After all, most...
VoteReports Down for Maintenance
We’re working on a major upgrade to VoteReports which should mean quicker and easier and access to bills and their votes, along with plenty more. We should have the site back up shortly.
December 2009
2 posts
Why VoteReports?
VoteReports started with a simple idea: It’s too hard to know who exactly is on the other side of your vote.
Yes, you may have heard the campaign speeches, you may have browsed their website, you may even know how they voted on some bill or other. And if you’re truly obsessed, you may have watched your Representative in Congress on C-SPAN.
But even with the speeches, the news...
Welcome
Hello,
Thank you for visiting our blog. Our website is expanding rapidly and we appreciate your early support.
Important updates will be posted on this page by VoteReports staff.
We hope you enjoy using our site, and we encourage you to give us feedback in the comments section so that we can make VoteReports better for you.
Sincerely,
Alex Fradkin