[liberationtech] NEWS: Connect 2 Congress Lets You Track Your Senator, One Vote at a Time

[Yosem Companys]

*Connect 2 Congress Lets You Track Your Senator, One Vote at a Time*
*Georgia Institute of Technology (04/12/10) Terraso, David*

Georgia Institute of Technology student Peter Kinnaird has developed Connect
2 Congress, software that tracked how senators voted in the 110th U.S.
Congress. Connect 2 Congress works by analyzing congressional voting
records, obtained from GovTrack.us, with a type of mathematical analysis
called a Poole-Rosenthal score. Connect 2 Congress assigns a value to every
vote. Each yes vote received a one and each no vote received a zero.
Senators who abstained from voting received a nine, which excluded them from
the count for that issue. Once the numbers are assigned, the system creates
a graph so that users can get a quick overview of Congress, or examine
changes in behavior over time. Connect 2 Congress also conducted a
leadership analysis on each member. "So, if you sponsor a bill you get a
full point, and if you co-sponsor a bill you get anywhere from no points to
a full point, depending on when you attached your name to it," Kinnaird
says. He is building a new version of Connect 2 Congress that tracks the
current 111th Congress. Kinnaird also plans to release a version for the
House of Representatives.
View Full Article <http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=55197>
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