

Show HN: Who represents me in government? - 5vforest
http://www.govhub.org

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andys627
This is AWESOME. People see government as this incomprehensible thing - and
parts of it definitely are - but there are simple ways of looking at some
stuff. Seeing who represents you is very important.

What I think would be better than this is to have a db of laws re: what stuff
costs and what pays for it. So put in an address and you get an image of a
dollar of income broken down by % that goes to what government program
(nationally would be defense, medicare, blah, white house gardening, etc.) but
on a local level you could see where your tax dollar went in terms of street
repaving, libraries, airport, etc etc etc. I have no idea where my money goes
on a local level (specifically).

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5vforest
Local-level data is definitely one of our main hurdles. I just had an
interesting phone conversation this morning where I learned that in the EU,
there is a mandated XML standard in which governments must release contact
information for public works departments in.

How cool would it be if we had a standard for tax dollar allocation so that
this data could be easily aggregated?

In the meantime, we're toying with ways to accumulate this data,
crowdsourcing, scraping other sources, etc.

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cfinke
That's neat. I agree with the other commenters that local officials should be
shown first.

FWIW, it looks like you haven't yet taken into account Minnesota's recent
redistricting. My representative is shown as John Kline instead of Erik
Paulsen.

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NGTwice
The redistricting affects which district you will be voting in this November
but your representative is still the same as it was before the redistricting
until that time.

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mindslight
Note: This is predicated on the unfortunate assumption that based on your
location, a politician can be said to "represent you".

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5vforest
Hey, thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions! We're a small team
right now (actually, I'm the lone dev for the site), but we definitely want to
integrate a lot of these suggestions -- especially info on campaign
contributions and local legislative data.

We're looking to add another developer to the team, so please get in touch
with us if you or someone you know is interested. Here's a small article about
us and our story: [http://govfresh.com/2012/04/for-govhub-all-politics-is-
perso...](http://govfresh.com/2012/04/for-govhub-all-politics-is-personal/)

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LeafStorm
I was expecting state-level officials to appear in the list considering that
information on federal officials is already available in many places and
having state information would be a good way to distinguish the product, but I
was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was data on city and county
officials as well.

Granted, Charles Meeker isn't actually mayor of Raleigh anymore, the current
mayor is Nancy McFarlane. But this is a step in the right direction.

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jcoder
I agree with the other commenters that this should work "from me, out",
meaning show me the most local, then state, then federal.

Also, please include a note on each page indicating where biographical data
comes from. I was (1) surprised to see so much detail on Portland Commissioner
Randy Leonard <http://www.govhub.org/officials/37457/randy-leonard/info> and
(2) surprised that there is a "religion" field. That's not really part of
governance, so who cares?

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jerrya
This is awesome, and I needed it just yesterday to determine who my local
representative is.

You use a nice large font too, but then I'd suggest making the
Federal/State/County/Local tabs a bit larger in font, I almost lost them.

All that said, I'm curious where the data comes from. How many different
sources are required to determine who are the representatives at any given
level of government?

(But you need a better picture of President Obama, come on, let the guy have
his chin back.)

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5vforest
Thanks for the kind words.

The data on officials is coming from Project Vote Smart (votesmart.org), but
the challenge is relating it to the different map shapes. We built a tool to
convert the U.S. Census shapes to KML format (available on github.com/GovHub),
and we then matched Votesmart's governments to these shapefiles.

~~~
jsabo
Can you go more into the challenges you had? From the few minutes I spent on
your site I didn't see too much of a difference from what I can obtain from
Project Vote Smart. That said, I do like your interface more.

I volunteer at a local nonprofit occasionally (plug: fairness.org) and we have
people spending a lot of time addressing postcards to state legislators going
by the home addresses people list on the postcards they fill out at our
events. Right now we mostly use Vote Smart or a state specific resource to
find the person's representatives, but their address lookup can be pretty
picky. This is unfortunate when a large portion of people who fill out
postcards have horrible handwriting. A tool that can deal with misspelled
street names and provide the information you and vote smart do would save us
an incredible amount of time and frustration. I'll try your site out next time
tackle the boxes of unsent cards.

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dclowd9901
I really like this. A very simple way to see your reps if you want to contact
them.

Might I suggest taking the idea a step further: Perhaps finding a way to list
key legislation and their voting records? The philosophy section is decent,
but most organization names are so vague as to simply be noise.

It'd be even more interesting if you could somehow "rate" how inline a rep's
views are to your own (in a percentage basis).

~~~
5vforest
Thanks! Those features are definitely in the pipeline -- the data is all
there, especially at the federal & state levels. There are sites and APIs that
collect this data, but we think we can aggregate it from different sources and
personalize it for the user in a way that hasn't been done already.

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danso
As others have said, starting off with local is better than with federal.

Others may disagree with me, but seeing the Supreme Court listed as my
representatives made my eyes roll a bit. Those are appointed positions and in
particular, positions designed to be unswayed by the electorate. It's useful
information, I guess, but to give them equal placement with all the other
elected representatives implies a naivete about our political structure.

Your app says there are 3 council members who represent me...I don't know if
that's a problem in the geocoding or if that really is the case. But I can't
find out because the app doesn't show where their offices are located. Instead
of making me click through to each councilmember's page to find out who
actually represents me, show this information in the table view.

And, when clicking through to a specific representative's page:
<http://www.govhub.org/officials/36678/g-koppell/info>

I'm betting almost all of your users will not think to look at the far bottom
right to see the contact info. If anything, this contact info should be the
first thing users see.

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5vforest
There should be a little "info" icon telling you that we don't have district
maps for your city council, so we're showing you everyone in it.

Agree about the contact info -- it actually converts into a nav tab on tablet
& mobile resolutions, but you're definitely right about it being out of focus
initially.

~~~
danso
Quick fix, nice!

I'm assuming this would be a quick fix, since the information appears to be
structured...but I think in the profile information, this:

 __Lieutenant Governor, State of Connecticut, 2011-present __

Should be:

2011-present Lieutenant Governor, State of Connecticut

Or some other such differentiating between time and position (bold text,
underline, etc)...just for easier reading.

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aasarava
Great site. Aside from the local tab positioning as has already been mentioned
several times, my only nitpick is with the use of the "See More" button. Not
sure why it's necessary -- it means I have to click several extra times to see
the information I want, rather than just once or twice. You should try to
reduce clicks, not add to them.

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Tiktaalik
I wonder if the ordering of who represents you should be handled differently.
Sorted starting from local is in many ways more relevant. Obama represents
everyone in the USA, and everyone knows that, whereas the local city
councillor is more likely to be the person the user isn't familiar with.

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5vforest
Heh, we've had this discussion before, I actually just had it this morning
again too. Thanks for chiming in, I think we'll actually make it happen now.

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gregpilling
I like your app. I have sent an email to your address (I hope it is the right
one, please put in your profile) with some ideas that I will never have time
to chase myself, in your space. I agree with the others that I am more
confused about who represents me locally, rather than federally.

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xbryanx
The tabs need more visual weight. I was unimpressed at first until I noticed
that I could dig into the meaty information at county and state level.

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5vforest
Duly noted! We'll make sure the meat is more easily accessible.

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nollidge
Switching to a different tab (Federal/State/Local) just shows a blank page
until I manually reload.

Chrome 18.0.1025.152 m on Windows 7.

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Dejital
Ditto on Chrome *.162 on Snow Leopard.

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5vforest
Weird, crap... it should be Pjax-ing, but I can't reproduce this bug yet. I'll
keep trying, thanks for letting us know.

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patrickgzill
Do you have a lot of money? No? Then no-one does.

