In February 2007, newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the Internet as an “incredible vehicle for transparency” and declared that she looked forward to hearing how the House could be “as open and accessible to citizens as possible.” Three months later, a bipartisan report suggested one way to achieve that: post all legislative information online, including all roll-call votes—ballots cast on the record.

Sounds obvious enough. But while building glass houses of honesty may be an oft-touted goal, it seems that legislators aren’t quite ready to dwell in such structures themselves. Neither house of Congress nor any council of our twenty-five largest cities makes an individual legislator’s votes—on the floor or in committee—available in a simple, downloadable format. Only ten of the ninety-nine state legislative houses provide such records for votes on the floor. More widely available are roll-call votes by bill—as opposed to by specific lawmaker. Admittedly, this can be useful. But it’s rather like publishing school attendance records by day rather than by student. Checking up on your man or woman in Washington via the House or Senate Web site would mean trawling through more than five hundred bills for just one term—the typical number of items that congressional and state legislators deal with during that time.

In recent years, Washington journalists have helped plug this information hole by providing an online roster of roll-call votes by legislator. Congressional Quarterly, National Journal, and Gallery Watch (owned by the publisher of Roll Call) each charge for their data, enriching raw roll-call figures with expert judgment. OpenCongress.org, GovTrack.us, and WashingtonPost.org, meanwhile, offer roll-call-by-legislator data for free. We tried it. It’s easy. All three sites provide politicians’ full voting records, as well as analysis of where the representatives’ votes place them in relation to their parties, to political values,...

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