Strengthening Youth Voices in an Open-Source Democracy

Basic government information: lists of elected representatives, geographic information like precinct details, vote history and voter registration data, local party information, budgets, campaign contribution databases. Much of this data is already being published, some of it with APIs. A structured, public database such as Metaweb's Freebase would make an ideal datastore for the publicly available data this application would require.

“My OpenCongress” already offers ways to track and comment on any bill, issue, or Member of Congress, as well as social networking and more. These changes will create new ways for users to customize the stream of updates they view and share on their profiles. First, Open Calais makes it possible to access rich metadata about tracked items. For example, if a user is tracking a Senator, data from the Open Calais API can inform you by automatically displaying associated organizations, facts, and events – “This Senator was appointed the Chairman of this committee on this date, click here to view more connections”. Second, Daylife makes it possible to access professionally-moderated news coverage of tracked items. For the example of a tracked Senator, the Daylife API can suggest related stories, articles, images, and topics – “Daylife Editors selected four news articles about this Senator in the past month, click here to view them”. Instead of following every news mention of a bill or issue (higher-volume), users could choose to receive only featured content (lower-volume). Our open-source development team welcomes input on these two API's, especially from their programmers, and suggestions on other data sources to consider. (Obviously, there are lots of viable options out there.)

You can choose from a range of current issues, legislators and interest groups. You can compare them at the national, state, or local level, across time or against each other. You can interact with campaign contributions to the politicians who represent you in Congress and, eventually, in your state and for your town. Does your elected official represent your interests? Our maps showing bases of support--both in your area and outside of it--help answer that question.