[open-government] Thumbs up. DemocracyMap submitted to Knight News Challenge

Mon Jun 25 11:44:25 UTC 2012

Thanks to the hard work of Phil Ashlock (OpenPlans), David Stein
(E-Democracy volunteer), Ryan Wold (Granicus) and many others, a very
collaborative DemocracyMap submission was made to the Knight News
Challenge.

Please give it your thumbs up, add a comment, etc.:

    http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/25577590335/democracymap

This challenge is about data. While DemocracyMap has made it past
round one in previous rounds, it fits squarely with the goals of this
round. While some countries have comprehensive basic data sources on
ALL government bodies, their websites, and representatives, many do
not including the United States. The simple inability to reliably
look-up who governs/serves/represents you right down to the _most
local of levels_ is a huge hole. Put simply, while it is getting
easier to look-up who is on your ballot, you don't have access to who
won in past elections and still represents you today and where is the
website for that government body. State legislatures on up are covered
fine by the market, but finding really local "who represents me?"
information pin pointed to you with exact results across government
jurisdictions is a huge core democratic information failure.

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
  Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.org
  Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
  Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072