How to find what you are looking for – constructing a search on BillTrack50
05.19.13
Building a search on BillTrack50 is fairly straightforward, however it isn’t exactly like doing a Google search. So there’s a few things you need to keep in mind, which I’ll explain in this post. There’s also a few tips and tricks advanced users might find useful. Any bills that are introduced later and meet your …
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Summary of White House’s new Open Data Policy (by Alan deLevie)
05.13.13
It’s exciting times right now in the government transparency community. Alan deLevie posted this very thorough summary of the recently released Open Data Policy, and it’s reception across the community, in Robert Richard’s wonderful Legal Informatics Research Network google group. I’ve pasted the whole thing below for your enjoyment. Written by Alan deLevie: Today the White House released …
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Hack4Colorado – civic hackathon in Denver on May 31
05.07.13
We are excited to be sponsors of on Hack4Colorado, coming up in a few weeks. I hope you are getting ready for Hack4Colorado on May 31st – Just wanted to give you some more information to make sure your hacking experience is the best it can be. If you are following @Hack4CO on twitter, then you know …
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The Ebb and Flow of Session
04.29.13
I learned a new word recently: prorogation. Which got me thinking, an inspired this post. It’s true that the states are all on different calendars. But many start early in the year, and many are done round about now, or recently finished, or will soon finish. As of now, we have 118,000 bills or so …
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Introducing: The Contrarians
04.23.13
We are launching a new blog feature, which I hope you will enjoy. As you may recall, last summer we dubbed “The Summer of Controversy” and picked various hot-button topics to examine. From Gay Marriage and Sex Offender Lists, to Stand Your Ground and Genetically Modified Food, we covered a wide range of topics, and hopefully helped you …
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Google, Twitter, & Facebook: We need to know if we can trust you
04.10.13
CISPA is a bill that would make every privacy policy on the web a total joke. These three companies say they’re for their users’ rights. So where do they stand on the law that would END privacy? See this view http://youtu.be/IkuH5ZjEdBw and check out this page for more information: http://www.saveyourprivacypolicy.org/ The internet is ours. Defend it.
Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim
04.07.13
There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That’s the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig. With rapid-fire visuals, he shows how the funding process weakens the Republic in the most …
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Word Cloud of Bills Passed in 2013 so far
03.23.13
Out of over 100,000 bills introduced so far this session, around 3,200 have been passed. I thought it would be interesting to make a quick word cloud to see what’s in those bills. Health and education are popular, as always, but also guns, controlled substances, and natural gas make an appearance as well. And many …
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Social Media – Good or Bad? What your state government thinks (and is doing)
03.14.13
I personally am a huge fan of some social media (Twitter, Tumblr) less so of others (Facebook). I certainly do think tools like these are going to be a significant communication tool for a long time to come. Apparently state legislatures agree, and have been introducing an ever growing number of bills involving social media …
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Hydraulic Fracturing – legislative trends
03.07.13
Hydraulic fracutring has been very much in the news lately, and has become a flashpoint for many when talking about the role of the oil industry, and it’s future. With the development of “unconventional” reserves, in particular using horizontal wells producing from shale formations, completion techniques that used to be the domain of petroleum engineers …
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New Webinar Series
02.28.13
We are launching a new feature: legislative round up webinars. They will be short, but interesting, explorations of how one specific topic is being treated across the states. We will do a quick demo setting to show you how to set up your own search, and then take some time to look at legislation across …
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Some nice eye candy from The Atlantic
02.23.13
“What Is It Exactly That Makes Big Cities Vote Democratic?” Some nice maps and graphs looking at how urban areas voted in the last election, and trying to figure out which factors might help explain why some (but not all) cities lean blue. Definitely worth checking out: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/02/what-makes-some-cities-vote-democratic/4598/
Has agreeability disappeared in politics?
02.16.13
We all hear about the gridlock in congress. Partisan politics seems the rule of the day. But how do things look at the state level? Do legislators get along better or worse? I previously wrote a post about what percent of bills pass, pointing out that Congress passed fewer bills then every single state last …
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NFL Fan Allegiance During The Playoffs
02.01.13
It’s not political, but it’s football, which is, you know, just as important. Right? Quality eye candy at the very least. Beautiful job by http://io9.com. There’s lots of good stuff in the whole blog post, well well worth checking out. And, if it’s not too late, Go Broncos! (it’s not too late, is it?) Link: …
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Gun control and mental health suddenly interesting
01.30.13
I did another quick word cloud to look at what people have been searching for over the last few weeks (below is the results from the most recent 1,000 searches). Seems that mental health/illness, guns and firearms control have been searched for the most. Along with various health related searches, which have been predominant since …
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New features and some examples
01.24.13
New Home Page Bling for the New Session As you are likely well aware, the sessions have started (or at least are pre-filing) nearly everywhere. We are processing about 3,000 new bills a day. To help you see the sessions unfold we’ve made a couple changes to our home page. First, we have a running …
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2013 Session Kick Off Word Cloud
01.13.13
To celebrate an exciting milestone — passing 1 million bills read on our website — I decided to celebrate by looking at what people are searching for. I took a look at the searches done in 2013 so far and made with word cloud using Wordle.net. There’s a few themes that jump out. Last year …
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Quick look at our users (hi users!)
01.03.13
First, welcome to everyone who is trying to keep up with legislation and recently found our site. We’re glad you’re here! The new influx of users caused me to spend a little time looking at who is using our site, and how. First, it turns out people from nearly every county in the country have …
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New BillTrack50 Features – Just in time for Christmas!
12.23.12
The elves, or maybe our developers — our development elves? — have been hard at work making improvements suggested by our awesome customers. In case you haven’t noticed, here are some new features you might want to check out: 1) It’s old news now, but federal bills are available and return in your results, with …
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How long is too long? Not long enough? Just right? (updated)
12.20.12
A little frivolous confection for your holiday enjoyment: comparing how long bills are in different states. Thanks to Rich for a lovely job on the maps, as usual. As a first comment, the average word length across the country of words in bills is 6.16 letters, vs about 5 letters in common writing. Given the …
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‘Session Starts Soon’ Promotion
12.15.12
Why not subscribe to BillTrack50 for the new year? You’ll find keeping up with legislation can be delightfully easy and affordable. You’ll love our research, tracking, and sharing tools. And for a little extra fun, we’re happy to announce the following pre-session promotion. Choose the item that suits you best: Two hour consultation (can be …
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Stop the Internet Coup – ITU meets Dec 3
11.19.12
An obscure international meeting next week could give a top-down, non-transparent UN body (one with representation from many dictatorships) the power to regulate the Internet. It’s called the ITU. The ITU would literally give dictators like Syria’s Assad (who was trending yesterday for–it seems–cutting Syria off from the Internet) a role in crucial decisions about …
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Voting map by voter, instead of by state
11.13.12
I find this presentation of how people voted across the country to be quite arresting. A wonderful example of political eye candy. Kudos to IDV Solutions and our friends at The Timoney Group on this well conceived and well executed map. Here’s a link to a bunch of versions, or check out IDV Solutions’ blog for …
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My Fair Election – first general results
11.12.12
So the dust has settled. We know the election results. But how did the election itself go? Tracking and quantifying good and bad experiences around the country was the goal of our www.MyFairElection.com project. With a great team and a little luck, we were able to gather over 1000 reviews of polling places on election …
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Top 10 Trending Bills and Legislators on BillTrack50
11.03.12
Our site debuted in March of 2012. Since then tens of thousands of people have been search for and reading bills on our site. We also get a lot of requests for legislator information. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what is most on people’s minds going into the election. …
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Bills about Disasters
11.01.12
LegiNation is based in Denver, which is pretty far inland, so we’ve been entirely out of harms way. But our thoughts go out to those who have been impacted by Sandy. We hope you are safe, and your recovery efforts go smoothly. Since it was on my mind, I decided to take a quick look …
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The prettiest political eye candy ever, by xkcd
10.28.12
This isn’t mine, but I have to share: Click for bigger view, and schedule some time to look, and think, and learn. If this doesn’t wow you, then your eyes just aren’t interested in candy, I guess. Huge kudos to xkcd for this amazing graphic. I feel good that I just bought the first book. …
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Tweet a bill, win a prize!
10.27.12
We are excited to announce a new promotion. We already help you track your bills, now we can help you track your stuff, too. We’ve partnered with Tagster.com to create these fantastic, all American tags. TAGster gives lost objects, people or pets a way back home. If you’d like a tag all you need to …
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Helping College Students in Ohio Deal with Debt That is Higher Than the Average
10.22.12
This is a guest post by Rachel Higgens, who is interested in the shifts in college enrollment that have changed many aspects of the modern higher education experience. Campuses are more diverse than ever before, but in many cases they are also more expensive — a pressing issue addressed in some detail in Rachel Higgins’ post. …
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Introducing My Fair Election for Election Day Transparency
10.13.12
MyFairElection.com is a crowd sourced election monitoring platform created by faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School with support from LegiNation, Inc. and a group of dedicated citizens. It enables voters to take an active role in monitoring their polling places and in improving the quality of elections and ballot access in the United States. To …
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Today is Internet Voter Registration Day
09.25.12
Every American who cares about the free and open Internet needs to be ready to vote this November. If you want to have your voice heard this election, you need to register by Tuesday in most states. To do so, please go InternetVotes.org and register yourself. If you’re already registered, you can help spread …
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What do we care about?
09.24.12
Perhaps you saw the Stephen Colbert segment about his Super PAC word clouds. Drawing inspiration from that idea, I made a word cloud (thank you wordle) of the top words in all bills, state and federal, for 2011-2012. Take a look: Let’s compare that to bills passed: Pretty similar, with Health and Education slightly larger, …
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How Purple Are We?
09.16.12
This time of year we hear a lot about swing states. But every state is made up of both parties. I thought it would be interesting to look at the distribution of legislators, partisan bills, and especially bipartisan bills. Let’s start with the distribution of legislators. You might expect the count of legislators to be …
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Comparing state legislatures by counting bills
08.28.12
On our home page we have a heat map of bills introduced in each state for 2011-2012, which is updated every night. It looks like this: Which is interesting. Hawaii for example, has a surprisingly high number of bills. As does Texas, when you factor in that they only meet every other year, as opposed to …
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Declaration of Internet Freedom
07.02.12
(click read more for graphic) We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. But to keep the Internet free and open, we must promote these principles in every country, every industry and every community. And we believe that these freedoms will bring about more creativity, more innovation …
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Personal Democracy Forum 2012
05.27.12
Sometimes, things just work out. This is one such story. First, some background: According to their website, Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) is “the world’s leading conference exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics and government”. The PdF was started back in 2004 by Andrew Rasiej and co-Founder Micah Sifry, and has had quite a history of speakers and ideas. It was …
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“Peace Corps for Geeks”
05.10.12
I saw Jennifer Pahlka speak at SxSW about Code for America, which she founded in 2009. Here’s anther of her talks, this one for TED, which is well worth watching: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang///id/1381 She got me pretty excited about her ideas. She argued that the government should work more like the internet — permissionless, open, generative. Government as …
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What it’s all about
04.25.12
Each week we will examine several hot topics that are in the news, from political campaigns, or interesting to us. We will explain both sides of the issue and tie it to the current legislative landscape to show what’s currently going on across the country. If after looking at the relevant bills you are moved …
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