http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/
Created by The Washington Post, the Congress Votes Database indexes all Congressional votes since 1991. Users can search by individual lawmaker, state, missed votes, late-night votes, etc. Also provides links to individual websites and RSS feeds for votes.
The RSS feed capability is a wonderful example of the usefulness of this new tool.
For example, you can actually subscribe to your representatives votes! You are automatically notified in your web reader whenever your representative votes. This is amazing!
Web feeds do not provide new information. They just makes it EASIER for you to receive the information YOU want (not the information OTHERS want you to want).
Over the past few months, washingtonpost.com has added new features to our politics section making the coverage more useful and providing more information on elected officials and candidates.
The Congressional Votes Database, in addition to individual voting records, now offers official biographies for each individual and a link to a PDF version of each member’s annual financial disclosure statement.
Links to recent Washington Post and washingtonpost.com articles on individual lawmakers have also been added. The first reference of a lawmaker’s name in an article will link to his or her respective entry in the database.
If a member of Congress is currently involved in a competitive election, we provide a link to a “Key Race” profile page. Readers who want to stay up to date on Key Race analysis may subscribe to a Key Races RSS feed. In addition to information on senators and representatives, we’ve added a full demographic profile for each lawmaker’s state or district.
For readers interested in the most important congressional votes, reporters and editors at The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com collaborated on a list of “Key Votes” cast during the 109th Congress. Each Key Vote includes an explanation of the legislation in question and analysis of its political impact. We have also created a daily schedule for both houses of Congress, including floor action and committee meetings and hearings.
Two new podcasts are available. The first is a weekly political roundtable discussion with Post staffers and invited newsmakers hosted by Sam Litzinger. The second is a twice-monthly program hosted by washingtonpost.com political writer and analyst Chris Cillizza, author of washingtonpost.com’s political blog, The Fix, that includes interviews with top 2008 presidential contenders and occasional analysis of how the 2008 race is shaping up.
Another addition is a “Top Stories” and “RSS & Podcasts” subscription box at the bottom of each article. The top stories feature allows readers to view the top 35 most-read politics articles in the section, while the RSS & Podcast provides links to our two politics podcasts as well as RSS feeds of our best articles, columns, and blogs.
Check out all the new features at the following link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/politics/?nav=left
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