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 bills in Congress are never voted on.
• Likewise, each of your report’s selected ”criteria bills” will alert you if they haven’t had any votes, with a message like this: “(unvoted)”.
• When you search for bills to add to your report, we’ll now only show you historical bills which have been voted on, along with any current bill, whether it’s been voted on or not.  This makes searching easier by removing options you don’t want anyway.

Beyond that, we’ve done a major shift to relying on our own local set of data, sourced from the excellent GovTrack and Sunlight Labs, rather than relying on web service requests in real time.  Over time this should mean a much quicker, more comprehensive and more robust site, and should speed our development along.

We know the site has a long way to go, and will have more to say on that soon - but we’re confident we’ll be ready to help voters be “in the know” well before this year’s elections, and we’re racing toward that.  In the mean time, we hope you’ll be understanding, gives us feedback and watch us grow.

Here’s to a new era of informed politics!

Executive Director,
Ben Woosley