Getting the facts on the U.S. Congress

Sparing the (long) back story, I worked on a project once that I thought was a waste of time.  I said “no one will want this service!”  Then I was presented with a chart showing demand for the service generated from data collected from a voluntary survey.  I was amazed. I thought, “Wow, I was wrong, it appears people do want this.”  A coworker said, “Do you have access to the raw numbers?”  I did.  He suggested I skew the charts by modifying the groupings by 1 unit.  So a bar showing 1 to 9 now showed 1 to 10, while the bar showing 10 to 19 did not include the “10’s” anymore.  The chart almost reversed, showing little interest in the service!

This was when I discovered, “if you want to know the truth, evaluate the raw data yourself”, and I live by that today.  I am constantly picking apart articles and news reports for potential skewing of the data.  (Whenever they show  “deaths caused by (big bad) guns” I ask, what is the number of deaths by guns used in a legal manner per year?  Good luck finding it.) 

Anyway, stripping away the BS is the point and that is why I like this site: http://www.govtrack.us/

 It tracks the votes of our U.S. Congress and it’s open source!  Sure there are summaries that are skewed a little (but not much), still you can get to the raw data.  That actual text of a bill, not a summary.  Who voted how or who didn’t vote.  You can see what is really going on.  It gives a good picture of what the democrats are supporting, what the republicans are supporting, and what votes are really bi-partisan.  (Sorry Nancy, getting 5 republicans to support your crazy idea is not “bi-partisan support”.)  It has RSS feeds too so you can track changes with ease.  I suggest everyone go check it out, you deserve to know what is really going on.