Kentucky is using twitter to share election day information to voters.

So if you’re voting in Kentucky follow the assistant Secretary of State at twitter.com/KYTrey for the latest in election day news.

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On Friday, we told you about the happy ending to months of negotiations to modernize the Franking rules that govern how members of Congress can use the Internet to communicate with us about their work. The new rules just passed by the House and Senate allow members of Congress to communicate with us on sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr without recrimination. (We advocated for these rules changes through our bipartisan collaborative effort, the Open House Project, and through our popular Let Our Congress Tweet campaign, the first Twitter-based petition to Congress, which hundreds of you joined.)

Before these new rules were passed, lawmakers could not officially embed a YouTube video on their official Web site, nor could they join us in political conversations around the popular virtual water cooler that Twitter has become.

To celebrate this historic precedent, we created Capitol Tweets, a widget you can embed on your site that updates you every 10 minutes with the latest tweets from members of Congress who use Twitter.

Download the widget, and while you’re watching the tweets fly, check out this effort by David All (who co-wrote the Open House Project chapter on Franking reform with Sunlight’s Paul Blumenthal) to grade them on their tweets.

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Last year, the Open House Project proposed the loosening of rules governing what lawmakers can post to their official web sites. Last week, the Senate Committe on Rules and Administration approved new rules to allow lawmakers to post content from third party sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and so on.

The new rules, while not immediately available for public review, appear to be far different from the ones proposed earlier this year. Earlier, Rules and Administration proposed to “keep a list of “approved Web sites” that agreed to provide pages free of advertisements or partisan leanings.”

In contrast to this proposal Republicans on the Committee offered a plan to allow lawmakers to post at their discretion, and in accordance with long-standing standards, with review by the Committee if necessary. The approved plan mirrors the Republican plan.

Kudos to the Senate for taking a step forward by allowing senators to more freely communicate across the Web.

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Be sure to check out Party Time, Sunlight’s project to track parties thrown at the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions as well as fund raising activities by all lawmakers running for Congress that happen all year round in Washington, D.C. and beyond. By accessing the site, you can find out where the parties are, view the array of invitations that go to lobbyists, Political Action Committee (PAC) representatives and others around Washington, D.C. and beyond. You can see who is hosting these parties, how much money it costs to go, where and when the party is and what people are going to be doing there.

Nancy Watzman, Party Time’s director, is streaming live Qik videos where she will record the action as she attempts to crash some of the parties, including the Blue Dog’s invite-only party hosted by AT&T. (Pardon our initial technical difficulties…You’ll notice we are providing a different angle on the conventions.) You can also follow her Twitter feed, where she is reposting her videos. By accessing delicious, you can follow all of Party Time’s mentions in the media. You can also follow New Media coverage of the convention at the Big Tent site, named after the literal big tent where you’ll find Gabriela Schneider, Sunlight’s communications director, assisting bloggers and other journalists cover the parties.

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Ben Pershing at the Washington Post writes, “If a party stages a protest on the House floor but no one can see or hear it, does it make a sound?” Yes, it makes a tweet.

After adjourning for the annual summer recess, House Republicans took to the floor to protest the failure of the House to hold a vote to allow offshore drilling. Since the protest happened after adjournment was announced, the House cameras and lights were turned off. While Republicans shouted from the floor and journalists hurried to see what was happening, GOP Rep. John Culberson was tweeting away the happenings from the floor. Culberson even let some other lawmakers take over his account including Roy Blunt, Adam Putnam, John Shimkus, Tom Price, Ted Poe, Virginia Foxx, and John Shadegg. Culberson’s tweets marked yet another moment where Twitter broke a story before it could make it to the news.

Culberson is also Qiking the event. Pretty cool stuff. (more…)

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Wednesday night, we launched Let Our Congress Tweet so citizens could voice their demand that Congress should be allowed to freely connect to us on the Internet, even on sites that don’t end in .gov

How would people respond?  Can Twitter really be used to influence lawmakers?  Well let’s just say that tweets can get pretty loud! As of right now, we have almost 400 tweets and great support in the blogosphere, including a great plug on the Twitter blog.  Mark at Mashable.com does a great job summarizing how this controversy got started and why it is important.  However, Tim O’Brien at O’Reilly said it best “This is much larger than just letting Congress Twitter, this is about letting social networks help to evolve the very concept of governance.”

This is not nearly the end, fair friends.  We are on a roll with new tweets all the time and even more members of Congress using the medium.  I think the comment from Mr. Christopher Glenn sums it up “…I wasn’t even aware who my representative in the House was, and now I’ve got a direct line to a real live human being that’s representing me in government, so I can let him know if I disagree with him, and why, and he can fill us in on what he’s voting for, what’s going on in Washington and heck, what he had for lunch if he likes. And that’s awesome.”

Yes, Chris, it is awesome.  So keep on tweeting and tell all your friends to join the movement!

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Shouldn’t members of Congress be able to connect with all of us freely and easily online? I’d guess most of you would think that’s a good idea. So, when Sunlight’s Open House Project Google group got riled up this week about this issue, we were inspired to do something to rally citizens to ensure lawmakers can freely connect with us all online.

In that spirit, we are launching a new campaign, Let Our Congress Tweet, to urge Congress to make clear guidelines that do not inhibit lawmakers from freely interacting with constituents where they already go online to share ideas-through Web services like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Join our petition right now and make your voice count.

Last year, Sunlight’s Open House Project issued a report recommending straightforward technological reforms to increase transparency and public access to the work and members of the U.S. House of Representatives. One of our major recommendations was to permit lawmakers to take full advantage of Internet resources. Wonks will know this as our recommendation to modernize the Franking Rules that govern how members of Congress use the Internet to communicate with constituents, primarily through their official Web sites.

Unfortunately, these rules are decided ad hoc in advisory opinions. (A guidebook given to lawmakers about all their activities includes some rules about their Web use. When Congress first developed rules governing lawmakers’ use of the Internet, it viewed the new medium as an extension of telephones, mail, radio and television, putting e-mail and member Web sites under the purview of franking regulations. Franking regulations were developed to restrict lawmakers’ sending of unsolicited mailings to constituents, but today the differences between the old and new forms of communication are so great that a rethinking of franking policy over electronic communications is necessary.

Under the current system, members of Congress are forced to break rules to use new technologies and services to do what their constituents ask of them: connect, listen and be held accountable. So, that YouTube video you saw on a lawmaker’s Web site? Illegal! Couple that with the vagueness of only having ad hoc opinions to guide lawmakers in their Internet communications on a case-by-case basis, and you get confusion as to what lawmakers are or aren’t allowed to do…resulting in a chilling effect.

As Congress reconsiders the restrictions placed on congressional Internet use, you can tell Congress to embrace the communication technologies that we already use. Join us and tweet the petition now.

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Rafael DeGennaro, founder and president of ReadTheBill.org (an early Sunlight grantee) has picked up on twittering between Rep. John Culberson and myself regarding the need for legislation to be posted on line in advance of consideration for 72 hours. Because faxes — what Raf sent to Culberson’s office — are such a pre-Web way of communicating, I thought I’d post the whole letter to Rep. Culberson here, and tweet it too.

If you think this is a good idea, call your own representative  and ask them to support H.Res. 504 too.

The Honorable John Culberson

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

BY FAX

RE: H.Res. 504 as solution to unread bills

Dear Representative Culberson:

I noted with enthusiasm your recent twittering with Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, about the continuing problem of members and the public not having time to read bills before floor debate. I spoke briefly on the phone about this two weeks ago with Lindsay Smith of your staff, and tried to follow up with her again this week. Thank you for speaking up about this problem. We agree with you that this practice must end.

As you know, clause 4 of House rule XIII (legislation) and clause 8 of rule XXII (conference reports) contain the current three day rule. Under both Republican and Democratic House majorities the three day rule has been routinely waived by waiving “all points of order”. Often this is done for the mere convenience of committees that have failed to produce timely legislation that can bear scrutiny. Recent examples include the Farm Bill, Iraq supplemental and FISA bill. But there are many other instances over recent decades. For example, my organization released a report in October 2007 showing that no human could possibly have read 13 of 14 omnibus appropriations bills passed under both Democratic and Republican congressional majorities and presidents during 1982- 2004. Another particularly egregious example was the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, the largest entitlement expansion in a generation.

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This afternoon, Rep. John Culberson and I had a twitterfest (am I making up terms here?) about the need for lawmakers (minimally)  to have the time to read legislation before they have to vote on it. (Sunlight thinks if bills and amendments were actually posted online in advance of votes citizens would have an opportunity to get on the act too.

The back and forth started a day ago after Rep. Culbeson complained earlier that the Democrats were bringing up bills before anyone had a chance to read them

Here’s the tweetalogue.

EllnMllr @johnculberson Support Rep Baird’s H. Res 504. http://tinyurl.com/583dkr There are 13 bipartisan co-sponsors. about 3 hours ago from web in reply to johnculberson

johnculberson @EllnMllr I am also going to ask my Repub colleagues to support 72 hr rule about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

Johnculberson @EllnMllr Right now is a perfect example of how desperately America needs you and others through the Internet to shine sunlight on Congress about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

johnculberson @EllnMllr Please eblast your members your followers and let them know their Congressmen are being asked to approve $185 Bill in War spending about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

johnculberson @EllnMllr in a floor vote before 6pm on a 184 pg $185 b bill that was written at 2:37pm and filed publicly about the same time - outrage! about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

johnculberson @EllnMllr Here is where floor bills 1st appear: www.rules.house.gov/. Click on war bill: HOUSE AMENDMENT TO SENATE AMENDMENT 2 (H.R. 2642) about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

johnculberson @EllnMllr Now read the bottom of each page for time stamp. June 19 2:37pm means the Legis Council finished writing the bill today at 2:37pm! about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

johnculberson @EllnMllr Remember - no comm hearing, no amendments, no time for we the people to read it on internet or anywhere else; 1 hour debate & vote about 2 hours ago from web in reply to EllnMllr

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Rep. John Culberson is member of Congress who understands what’s happening on the Web today. He’s a congressman who is on twitter, and he uses the medium effectively. That is, he does not use twitter just as a vehicle to push blog posts (or has a staffer tweet for him), but engages in conversations and gives a great glimpse on his daily activities.

It’s refreshing to see a member of Congress who personally tweets updates about his work as a legislator, often from the House Floor. We love that he talks specifically about bills being considered in real time so we know how he is going to vote on a pending bill and why.

He agrees that we need more transparency about the work of Congress and thinks “the darkest and deepest hole in Congress” is the House floor. I learned that after @johnculberson engaged in an twitter conversation with Sunlight’s Communications Director @stereogab. She had tweeted about the APME earmarks series, to which he replied that he was one of the first members of Congress to disclose his earmark requests on his Web site.

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