Transparency in Government Act 2008
Title II - Enhancing Public Access to the Work of Congressional Committees, Legislative Information, and Votes
Sec. 201. Posting of Committee recorded votes online in a timely manner.
By posting committee votes online within 48 hours, the public will have timely access to some of the most important votes taken by its Members of Congress.
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The Rules of the Senate and the House of Representatives shall be amended to require all committees post recorded votes on their Web sites within 48 hours of such votes.
General Comments on Transparency in Government Act 2008
Would it be possible to make a requirement about the required format of these votes so they would easily be downloadable into a spreadsheet/database?
6-12 hours is reasonable given the critical importance of this information. Once a standardized system is set up to record and publish votes, this time frame can be met. The THOMAS Web site routinely posts votes within hours after their completion.
Following up on Nancy and Dan's comments:
Amend Sec. 201 to read:
"The Rules of the Senate and the House of Representatives shall be amended to require all committees post recorded votes in both human-readable and structured data format on their Web sites on the day of such votes."
Why 48 hours? The test should be what Newt Gingrich said on the launching of Thomas in mid 90s - ``If every citizen had the access to information that the Washington lobbyists have, we would have changed the balance of power in America towards the citizens and out of the Beltway,'' There's no compelling reason I know of that committee votes, and even moreso floor votes, can't be online within minutes or hours of the vote.