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 articles, we don’t have the full, true picture.  The truth is, your representatives have a footprint from all their actions in office — a thousand different ways in which they support or oppose some cause or other, from a thousand different viewpoints.  And even if we know a few of these, votes on our own pet issues, there are hundreds others we don’t know, because it’s too hard to know, because we have lives to lead beyond keeping Washington in line.

And when we don’t know, what do we do?  Maybe we cast votes on the little we do know about our options.  Maybe we vote down party lines, or for a familiar name, regardless the quality of the candidate.  Perhaps we even stay home, choosing not to choose when we lack the information to know the right pick.

This has terrible consequences, as it undermines our ability to hold our representatives accountable.  Without an informed citizenry to hold them accountable, they can quietly act against our own interests without us even having the chance to know and set them right.

VoteReports is about solving this.  We think you and everyone should be able to get a true, simple picture of your representative, not based on talk but on clear, objective facts.  And not just from a certain perspective, such as the NRA’s or the ACLU’s, but from your own, from those of your neighbors and from others that you trust.  To compare representatives based on their actual votes and to track them over time, as they support or oppose your interests with each vote.

We believe that when you have this power you’ll have the tools to be a better citizen: better able to know whether your representative is truly representing you, and better able to hold them in line with your voice and your vote.

We hope to deliver this vision starting with our very next election in November 2010.  In the mean time we’ll be working hard and looking forward to the next stage of the informed American citizenry.

Ben Woosley
Executive Director, VoteReports