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Democracy Dashboard

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The Idea:

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

One of the big challenges still facing campaigns and civic engagement organizations is delivering basic information to voters. Television commercials and direct mail do a poor job of this: personalized contact is the future. The Democracy Dashboard will help facilitate that personal contact. The Dashboard is a personalized, trusted and reliable first-stop for American voters to get basic information about elections, their current elected representation and government, and groups, parties and activists that are active in their area. The Dashboard system would also serve as a tool for activists, groups and campaigns to reach out to and connect with new potential supporters.

What information will people interact with to make this change?

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.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?

I have been the director of a California voter file database project for two years, and an almost full-time volunteer activist for four years before that. (and was a software engineer & entrepreneur for ten years before that) My focus as an activist has been on field organizing and participatory democracy.