Maplight.org, the nonpartisan political watchdog site, will announce later this morning that it has launched a new U.S Congress database. The new database combines information like bill texts and legislative voting records, supporting and opposing interests for each bill and campaign contribution data for each member of Congress.
Maplight, which Michael wrote about previously, started life as a California watchdog, focused on state political issues and interest groups, but with today's announcement the site has moved to the national level.
Thanks to dead simple navigation it's easy to stumble your way through some otherwise very complex data. You can tunnel in based on specific representatives, interest groups or congressional bills and from there discover a number of interesting facts. For instance, most congressional bills are written by representatives who, not coincidentally, received the bulk of their campaign money from special interest groups that stand to benefit from the proposed legislation.
Of course the connection between money and politics isn't news, but somehow seeing it so bald-faced and obvious makes it shocking. And depressing.
But perhaps part of the reason such close ties between the authors of legislation and the beneficiaries of it exist is because previously such data was not available to the average citizen.
The growing citizen journalism movement and sites like Maplight, and others such as Opensecrets.org and Follow the Money, along with wiki-based political reporting resources like Congresspedia, are changing that.
Will government official be able to continue with their dubiously motivated legislation when the whole world is watching? That remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, like it or not, radical transparency is being thrust upon Congress like never before.
