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konklone / congress-android

Congress for Android, an app for tracking Congress.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightlabs.android.congress
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Add Issue Scorecard Option #284

Closed chrisheyde closed 14 years ago

chrisheyde commented 14 years ago

My group, the Animal Welfare Institute, has the only online legislative scorecard for legislators and their position on animal protection measures. It is called the Compassion Index (www.compassionindex.org). Activists can see animal protection bills and see how their legislator stands on it, be that cosponsorship or vote if a bill. Allowing for the incorporation of this into the Congress App would be a huge draw for activists in the humane community which boasts over 11 million followers.

konklone commented 14 years ago

Right now, I'm not considering adding legislative scorecard data to the app, though it's not impossible that it may someday.

If I did add it, I would want to incorporate data from many sources, not just one or a few groups. In addition, I would need to be able to get this data in an automated fashion from a machine-readable source. The Congress app doesn't ship with a database - every piece of information in the app comes from a public, documented API.

For example, Project Vote Smart has an API to access lots of interest group rating data, and this is what we use on Politiwidgets to power our interest group ratings widget: http://politiwidgets.com/widgets/ratings?bioguide_id=L000551

konklone commented 14 years ago

I appreciate you signing up on Github to add the issue. But since I don't plan on using interest group ratings at this time, I'm gonna close the issue until that changes. Thanks for the feedback, Chris.

chrisheyde commented 14 years ago

klondike, thanks for your quick reply. I guess I will look in to developing one for AWI. Our scorecard has been very well received in the humane community so I think it will be useful. Your app is very good and I use it on my N1 all of the time.

Best, Chris