TITLE II - Enhancing Public Access to the Work of Congressional Committees, Legislative Information, and Votes

Sec. 206. Electronic access to votes. (3 Comments) subscribe to the comments feed

Providing Congressional vote information in a structured format will allow third parties to reuse and republish the data more reliably, and enable Congressional staff to make better decisions that depend on legislative information.

  1. The Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate shall post on the public Internet site of the Office of the Clerk or Secretary, respectively, a record, organized by Member or Senator name, in a structured data format, of the recorded votes of each Member or Senator, including the roll, date, issue, question, result, and title or description of the vote, and any cost estimate of the Congressional Budget Office related to the vote; and

  2. Each Member or Senator who maintains an official public Internet site shall provide a clearly presented electronic link to the Member's individual recorded vote information described in paragraph (1).

3 comments on Sec. 206. Electronic access to votes.

  • The House publishes roll call votes in XML. The Senate should do the same.

    CBO cost estimates are not relevant here. This is one of a million of factoids related to a bill that might be of interest. The sites should (and no doubt would) link to THOMAS. The link to CBO should be on THOMAS.

    There are a lot of new requirements in this bill on where Member websites must link to. This maybe should be put in a separate section just for requirements on Member websites.

    posted by Joshua Tauberer, GovTrack.us at March 27, 2008

  • word change:


    In section (b):
    FROM
    "...vote information described in paragraph (1)."

    TO:
    "...vote information described in paragraph (a)."

    posted by Matthew Castanien at April 2, 2008

  • I agree that the votes would be properly located on Thomas

    posted by Emily at May 14, 2008

Comment on Sec. 206. Electronic access to votes.

(You may comment anonymously. Moderators may remove offensive or off-topic comments.)

Your Name (and Organization*):

Your Comment: (HTML is not permitted, but links will be automatically linked)

*We encourage you to take credit for your comments by including your name and organization.

Preview Your Comment

The Sunlight Foundation supports, develops and deploys new Internet technologies to make information about Congress and the federal government more accessible to the American people. Through its projects and grant-making, Sunlight serves as a catalyst to create greater political transparency and to foster more openness and accountability in government. This Site may contain links to Internet sites that are not operated by Sunlight Foundation. These links are provided as a service and do not imply any endorsement of the activities or content of these sites, nor any association with their operators. Sunlight Foundation does not control these Internet sites and is not responsible for their content, security, or privacy practices. We urge you to review the privacy policy posted on web sites you visit before using the site or providing personal information.