OpenCongress has just launched Battle Royale, their new feature that collects all the data about Congress generated by users of “My OpenCongress” since January 2008.  David Moore, OpenCongress’ director, describes it as a “Billboard Chart” for legislation or a “Digg” for Congress. Battle Royale lets you see what bills people are loving or hating. It will gauge their user community’s views on legislation by stacking up all the bills, issues, and members of Congress. “This new tool is a key part of our work to harness the social wisdom created on OpenCongress and make it accessible & useful across the Web,” David wrote in an email. One purpose of Battle Royale is to give a bird’s eye view for researching the public’s opinion of Congress. Check it out and you’ll find a list of the top ten most supported and most opposed bills of the past 30 days on OpenCongress.

The most popular bill of the 110th Congress is the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008. This certainly makes sense considering the state of the economy and the fact that new jobless claims are now at a 26-year high. Their users have given the bill the most “aye” votes, the most comments and the most users are tracking it than any other. The least popular bill is the Global Poverty Act of 2007, despite the fact that President-elect Barack Obama is the bill’s leading sponsor in the Senate. Users have voted “nay” on this bill more than twice as much as any other bill. Funny enough, the bill ranks as the fourth most voted for bill as well.

At the site you can see the popularity ratings of each member of Congress, as well as a list of the most tracked issues on Capitol Hill.

Obviously, groups and individuals with an agenda (or an axe to grind) can use the site to show interest on their issues and to help move or block legislation. We think this might catch on as an advocacy tool.

If you have a Digg account, give a quick digg and help spread the word.

Check it out and join in!

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Our friends at Change Congress have asked their members and supporters to take a survey to help them decide what they should be focused on for the coming year. And a number of questions they asked dealt with government transparency: Are earmarks fundamentally wrong or just need to be more open and transparent to the public? What’s one thing that would create a more open and transparent government? And finally, should lobbyists have a role in government? All good questions.

Japhet Els, Change Congress’ political director, lists some of the responses they have received. Regarding earmarks:, “I believe that if earmarks are going to exist, they ought to be transparent.” Another, “Nothing is 100% wrong or right. Earmarks have their use and full and timely transparency should check abuses.” We agree with these sentiments. That’s why we worked with our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense to create Earmark Watch, where we’ve placed over 3,000 earmarks online, and ask citizens to research them.

(more…)

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Agence France-Presse (AFP), France’s largest news agency and the third largest agency in the world, published a great overview of the power of the Internet as played out in the 2008 election. Not only have the candidates embraced Web tools to reach voters, the voters themselves have dove into the online world to lend a hand, organize and find out information on the candidates and news about the latest twist or turn of the election.

They article centers on an interview they conducted with Micah Sifry, Sunlight consultant and co-founder of TechPresident.com. “There are a lot of great non-partisan sites that have all kinds of information, not just about the presidential candidates,” Micah said. “For sheer self-education there’s a great deal available out there on the candidates on the local, state and national level.” Micah gave a shout out to OpenCongress.org as a great site looking into the records of congressional incumbents.

The AFP article also highlights a new study by the Pew Research Center that shows how the Internet has become a major source of campaign news. Television remains the dominant source, but the percent that say they get most of their campaign news from the Internet has tripled since October 2004 (from 10% then to 33% now), Pew reports. While Web traffic has skyrocketed, Americans usage of TV and newspapers has remained virtually the same as in past years. Amazing only to those who haven’t been paying attention, the Pew study found the Internet now rivals newspapers as a main source for campaign news. The use of online video such as YouTube has really taken off during the election season, with an incredible 39 percent of voters report having viewed or otherwise using online video in October, up from 24 percent in December. Record numbers of visitors have gone to independent news sites such as The Huffington Post and The Politico, and blogs such as Daily Kos and RedState.com, according to the report.

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The folks at OpenCongress, a Sunlight joint project with Participatory Politics Foundation, are making great strides at building the place to go to find the exact information about every bill, issue, person, and vote in Congress. They already run circles around any other site, including Thomas, the Library of Congress site, in terms of ease of use and content.

Earlier today, OpenCongress announced the addition of 13 new features (this team is amazingly prolific!) and a site redesign giving you more information about bills, their sponsors, and other ways for individuals to track their interests in Congress. Many of the changes and additions came from your ideas. We’re really trying to respond too how you want to use the site. Some of the new features OpenCongress is most excited about are the ones involving input from users, such as the rating of the “most useful” news articles, blog posts, and user comments. The idea is for users to help “filter up” the best information on the Web about what Congress is up to.

Be sure to check it out.

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