April 24th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
This week, legislation from 10 U.S. States join our Bill Tracker. Legislation from Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington can now be tracked, discussed, and voted on.
We will be adding more States and non-U.S. Countries in the coming weeks and months.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
This week we rolled out our first U.S. state bill tracker: Georgia. As with Congressional legislation, State bills can be searched or browsed by anyone. Additionally, site members can track, vote, comment and use the advanced bill searching and filtering tools.
Over the next few months we will continue to push out state legislation through our legislative platform. In addition to U.S. States, we’re also working on adding more countries to the platform starting with Canada and Australia.
With all of the above, we hope to do more than simply provide a means to look at a bill. Our broader concern is to provide site members with helpful and interesting ways to discover how lawmakers around the globe address common issues through legislation, and combine that knowledge with our site tools for information sharing and mobilization.
Some political leaders say they want transparency in government. Some are actually sincere about this statement. We want to take transparency a step further. We want to provide transparency with communication, and connection. Seeing what is being done in government is one thing. Seeing what is going on and being able to express your thoughts with others about it is a much different ballgame.
View bills from the Georgia State Legislature
November 24th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Polls
Need to gather a little bit of feedback on an issue, or just find a new way to bring attention to it? Create a poll. Now, individual site members can create custom polls linked from their profile pages. This feature was previously only available to groups and campaigns.
To create a Poll, Just choose the Polls link in the Citizen Links box on your MyP4A page
click the New Poll link
and you’ll be taken to a page that allows you to set up a poll:
“Blog On P4A” Bookmarklet
Another new feature, the “Blog on P4A” Bookmarklet, makes sharing relevant political content on the web much easier. The bookmarklet allows those with Politics4All accounts to easily clip a portion of a story on another website and blog about it on Politics4All.
First, ADD the bookmarklet
The bookmarklet can be added by going to Your Settings > Tools and following the instructions under Bookmarklet:
Choose
Next, USE the bookmarklet to share news and other content
To use the bookmarklet while you’re reading an article on another website, use your mouse to highlight a small portion of text you wish to quote
click the Blog On P4A button in your toolbar or in your Favorites
and you’ll be taken to a new entry in your Politics4All blog, with the quote, link, and title already filled-in:
If you’re not currently signed into Politics4All, you’ll be prompted to sign-in before the process can be completed. Once on the new blog post page, you can edit the title or quote if you wish, and add your own comments before posting. Please follow all copyright and fair-use requirements when quoting from other websites.
Congressional Roll Call Votes
Roll Call Votes for the Congress are now being fed into Politics4All. We’ve currently got the votes for the 110th Congress, and will be aggregating the 111th Congress on a daily basis when it convenes in January 2009. For bills that have been voted on, the vote information is linked from the Recent Votes section on the bill’s Status tab:
In this case, following the House Roll Call Vote #681 link will bring you to the vote results page for #681:
Check it out and let us know if you have any problems using these features.
October 31st, 2008 at 5:10 pm
In addition to searching for Senate and House bills using the main site search tool, we have added Bill Finder to the Bill Tracking pages that allow you to browse by bill topic, search by keyword or bill number, and limit your results to a particular chamber (House or Senate).
There is also a “tag cloud” (an unordered list of the subjects of the more popular bills search/viewed) beneath the bill finder. The larger the text, the more popular that subject is in our Bill Tracker.
All site visitors can use this search and browse tool. However, joining the site as a member adds a few extra advantages.
As a site member, you have several additional options to vote on, make comments on, or join discussions on bills. You can also follow (track) the bill. When new comments are made on bills you’re following, updates appear in your activity feed and, when the 111th Congress is called to session in 2009, changes in a bill’s progress through the legislature will also be tracked and you will be notified when such changes occur.
As always, all site members who have entered their state and Congressional district information in their Account Settings will be able to link directly from their MyP4A home page to the sponsored/cosponsored bills and legislative activity of their elected officials.
So check out the improved Bill Finder today and let us know if we can improve the experience in any way.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
One of our primary goals here at Politics4All is to greatly simplify the effort required by citizens to remain up-to-date on the activities of their elected officials. This week we gave Politics4All site members the ability to follow, vote on, and discuss Congressional legislation in a way we hope is simple, helpful, and informative.
Bills in our system can now be followed just as other site members, groups, and campaigns. Members following bills will receive new comment updates in their activity feeds on their MyP4A home page. When the 111th Congress convenes in January, Politics4All will track the progress of new bills through Congress and update their status (on the bill display pages and activity feeds of members following them).
As an added benefit, members who have entered their political district information in their user accounts will automatically be informed when their senators and representatives introduce or cosponsor new legislation.
The initial version of this feature includes House and Senate bills aggregated from the Library of Congress, with resolutions, amendments, and much, much more to come in the weeks and months ahead.
Please check out these new features and let us know what you think!
