FYI

Senate to Expand Transparency of Senate Votes
DeMint thanks Rules Committee for quick response

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, thanked Senators Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who lead the Senate Rules Committee, for quickly responding to a bipartisan effort to modernize the way the Senate publishes its roll call votes using the XML format. The Rules Committee has instructed the Secretary of the Senate to make this change.

“I want to thank Senators Schumer and Bennett for helping us increase Senate transparency and accountability. Last week, a group of Senators on both sides of the aisle sent them a letter asking them to publish Senate votes in the XML format so the public can use computers to search, sort, and visualize voting records in new ways. I’m pleased we were able to quickly make this change, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to make more improvements in the future,” said Senator DeMint.

“This simple but important change will help give Americans real transparency on their Senator’s voting record,” said Senator DeMint.

An XML feed of votes for the first session of the 111th Congress can be found at this feed: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_111_1...

An XML feed of individual roll call votes will also be posted, such as Vote # 177 found here: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1111/vote_1...

On Friday, Senator DeMint and a group of bipartisan senators wrote<http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.De...> to the Rules Committee and asked for Senate votes to be made available in XML format.

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http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.De...

Josh

indeed!

Senate Reverses Policy, Posts Votes in
XML<http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/05/05/senate-reverses-policy-...>
By
John Wonderlich <http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/people/jwonderlich>
on 05/05/09
@ 2:46 pm<http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/05/05/senate-reverses-policy-...>|
0
Comments<http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/05/05/senate-reverses-policy-...>
 Tags: demint <http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/demint/>,
osp <http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/osp/>,
Senate<http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/Senate/>,
victory <http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/victory/>,
votes<http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/votes/>,
XML <http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/xml/>

The US Senate has finally reversed its longstanding policy of restricting
public access to raw data about how Senators vote, and is now posting
XML<http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1111/vote_1...>of
votes on Senate.gov.

This move follows a recent
initiative<http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.De...>,
led by<http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.De...>Senator
DeMint, to request the Senate Rules Committee post the votes data.

While this issue may seem to be arising out of the blue, with recent
coverage in the Politico<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/21985.html>,
Senate votes XML have been brooched as a perennial roadblock. It would seem,
however, that the number of people affected by the restriction grew to the
point where they could no longer be ignored, and common sense prevailed.

Just as the recent rewriting of Web use restrictions has led to creative
Internet use among Members of Congress, the new votes data should help fuel
a renaissance of vote analysis and visualization. XML encourages advanced
processing and analysis, making votes legible to both humans and computers,
and giving us a new view on how Senators vote.

Senator DeMint and Senator Durbin deserve praise for quickly acting to
address the data issue, as do many staffers and administrators. Senator
Lieberman expressed support for vote data access in the fall of
2007<http://www.theopenhouseproject.com/2007/12/12/lieberman-addresses-put...>,
and Jerry Brito wrote about the issue earlier that
year<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1023485>as
well.

This is what transparency reform looks like. Complicated, messy, confusing,
often bipartisan, often initially unsuccessful, and helpfully spurred on
through public involvement<http://groups.google.com/group/openhouseproject/browse_thread/thread/...>.
If this case serves as any example at all, we should be very encouraged
about future efforts.

For today, though, Nice Work, Senate!