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- A Light on Money and Politics: MAPLight.org
A Light on Money and Politics: MAPLight.org
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between money and politics. We connect campaign contributions and votes for U.S. Congress, providing groundbreaking transparency so that bloggers, journalists, and citizens can hold legislators accountable.
Supporting organization:
MAPLight.org
URL:
http://www.maplight.org
City:
Berkeley
State/Region:
CA
Country:
United States
Give and Take: Describe your project's top three needs
Type of expertise needed:
Technical Expertise Need: Programmers to write scripts to scrape state government web sites and translate bills and votes data into XML; and programming to automate searches for legislation in U.S. Congress, using Google and news databases.
Type of expertise needed:
Technical Expertise Need: Robust hosting services and additional servers.
Type of expertise needed:
Management Expertise Need: An experienced development/fundraising consultant to improve our fundraising plans, and to consult with occasionally going forward.
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
After each election, does your Congressperson vote your way?
Do they take money from tobacco companies? Pharmaceutical firms? Oil companies?
Do they vote to lower your prescription and gas prices? Or do they vote with big-money special interests?
MAPLight.org reveals the answers, providing the information you need to hold your legislators accountable.
MAPLight.org is a groundbreaking public database. We illuminate the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways.
“...a preview of the next generation of money-and-politics reporting.”
--The Sunlight Foundation
Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws. This common practice is contrary to the public interest, yet legal.
MAPLight.org makes money/vote connections transparent, to help citizens hold their legislators accountable. We bring together all contributions given to legislators with each legislator's votes on every bill. We publish this critical civic information on an attractive, easy-to-use free website, www.maplight.org.
MAPLight.org is designed for bloggers, issue-oriented advocacy groups, journalists, and citizen leaders. We provide timely, specific information about money and votes in the California legislature and, starting in May, U.S. Congress. Our efforts show how big-money campaign contributions affect issues that people care about, promoting transparency, accountability, and reform. We are nonprofit and nonpartisan.
For a brief overview of MAPLight.org, see our 6-minute Video Tour.
Money and Politics Widgets
With NetSquared funds, we will create customized ‘widgets’ showing campaign contributions and votes in U.S. Congress, updated in real-time. Any blogger, nonprofit group, or citizen can create a widget for free about whatever Federal issue they are interested in.
Sustainability (financial) model:
MAPLight.org is supported by individual donors and foundations, including the Sunlight, Wallace Alexander Gerbode, and Arkay Foundations. As MAPLight.org grows, we will add custom data analysis tools available through paid subscription, to complement free levels of access. We may also add limited keyword-based advertising.
“What used to take hours to dig up and analyze is now laid bare for you to see in seconds or minutes.”
--California Progress Report
Technology Vision:
Our site is built on the Drupal open-source content management system, with extensive custom coding. However, the programming to scrape state websites (mentioned in Needs section above) does not have to use Drupal.
Potential obstacles:
During the 18 months developing our money/votes database, we have already overcome the most significant research and data integration obstacles. Remaining obstacles include further refinement of research methods for tracking and summarizing Federal legislation.
Resource Needs:
To publish free, customizable money/vote ‘widgets’ available to all, we need $35,000 to support custom programming, user-interface design, data collection, and server resources.
Key Milestones:
The MAPLight.org money/votes database launched in October 2006 for the California Legislature. In May we will launch our expanded site, covering U.S. Congress.
Within 90 days of receiving this NetSquared award, we will launch a free, public widget-builder. Any blogger, nonprofit group, or citizen can create a free widget to put on their site, about any bill in U.S. Congress or the California Legislature.
These free widgets will help bloggers, nonprofit groups, and citizens illustrate connections between money and politics for whatever issues interest them.
Example: Net Neutrality
A communications bill, H.R. 5252 in 2006, was opposed by online services like Google, and by the broad Internet community, because it did not insure “Net Neutrality”--the principle that traffic from all websites will be treated equally by Internet service providers. Phone companies like Bell South supported this bill--they want to be able to charge websites for speedy delivery of content.
This sample ‘widget’ shows the pattern of political giving for this bill. Telephone Utilities, for example, gave an average of $11,063 each to members of Congress who voted Yes on this bill, but just $3,874--about a third as much--to members who voted No. Our tools will let anyone create a widget like this, for any bill.
Project Summary:
After each election, does your Congressperson vote your way?
Do they take money from tobacco companies? Oil companies? Pharmaceutical firms?
Do they vote to lower your prescription and gas prices? Or do they vote with big-money special interests?
MAPLight.org provides the information you need to hold your legislators accountable.
MAPLight.org is a groundbreaking public database. We illuminate the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways.
Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws.
This common practice is contrary to the public interest, yet legal. MAPLight.org makes money/vote connections transparent, to help citizens hold their legislators accountable. We bring together all contributions given to legislators with each legislator's votes on every bill. We publish this key civic information on an attractive, easy-to-use free website, www.maplight.org.
MAPLight.org is designed for bloggers, issue-oriented advocacy groups, journalists, and citizens leaders. We provide timely, specific information about money and votes, in the California legislature and, starting in May, U.S. Congress. Our efforts show how big-money campaign contributions affect issues that people care about, promoting transparency, accountability, and reform. We are nonprofit and nonpartisan.
“…a preview of the next generation of money-and-politics reporting.”
--The Sunlight Foundation
With NetSquared funds, we will create customized ‘widgets’ showing campaign contributions and votes in U.S. Congress, updated in real-time. Any blogger, nonprofit group, or citizen can create a widget for free about whatever Federal issue they are interested in.
For a brief overview of MAPLight.org, see our 6-minute Video Tour.
Comments
The data is out there...
It would be great just have some way to pull it together and expose it to the light. Bravo!
Great initiative, and great name.
I don't think I have anything to add. It's just great. :)
--ivan (quixotic1.com/Genocide Intervention Network)