Senate votes in better format

[Jones, Tom (Commerce)]

Hey guys – I spoke with Rules a while ago and didn’t get a really good answer why votes aren’t posted in an XML format – or at least something better than the current format. 

 

If there is someone out there who has been following this for a while who can ping me offlist and give me the what’s what (more than just the articles online and such) I would really appreciate it.  After I get through Passover  I’ll be in full blown recess, so I can focus on the important as opposed to the urgent and important.  

 

Anyway you know where to find me. 

 

Back to vote-a-rama. 

[Derek Willis]

Over the past couple of years I've exchanged emails with the Secretary
of the Senate's office about this, and the most definitive answer I
ever received came in 2007. Quoting from an email I got from Cheri
Allen, in response to a question I posed about xml files from earlier
congresses that had been posted on senate.gov:

A few representative votes (only a few from the early congresses)
were published out to the active site during some testing periods. I
really
need to remove them from the site.
We are not authorized to publish the XML structured vote
information. The Committee on Rules and Administration has authorized
us to publish vote tally information in HTML format [not a structured
format]. Senators prefer to be the ones to publish their own voting
records.
As you know, looking at a series of vote results by Senator or by
subject
does not tell the whole story. Senators have a right to present and
comment on their votes to their constituents in the manner they
prefer.
This issue was reviewed again recently and the policy did not change.

Personally, I love the "Senators prefer to be the ones to publish
their own voting records." Of course they do!

Derek Willis

On Apr 2, 3:11 pm, "Jones, Tom (Commerce)"
<Tom_Jo...@commerce.senate.gov> wrote:
> Hey guys - I spoke with Rules a while ago and didn't get a really good answer why votes aren't posted in an XML format - or at least something better than the current format.

[Sarah Burris]

I was going to wait to send this to you all until we actually
finished - but we've been working on an open government wiki to track
bills, votes, as well as email contact information for members as
well as social networking links like twitter and facebook for their
pages.

This comes after we did a big online push on KansasJackass.com for
elected officials who aren't using social media ... made fun of
them ... etc... Many of them got on facebook, and we're working with
them to develop twitter skills as well.

The Wiki we've been developing for about a week but been organizing
with both democrats and republicans via twitter. We were then called
out by a conservative list serv who said that transparency and
accountability are lefty communist ideals and that we should be
closely monitored.

We constantly receive so much push back from people who believe that
open government is a liberal philosophy. Is this unique to our area??

See Blog about it here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/2/715857/-Online-Explosion-in-
Kansas-Scares-GOP

Wiki here (again still under development)
http://openkansas.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

See list serv email attached.

[Conor Kenny]

A new site? A successor to "Read the Bill"? "Publish the XML?"

This could be in the header:

Senators prefer to be the ones to publish their own voting records... to present and comment on their votes to their constituents in the manner they prefer.

Seriously, that is one explosive quote (at least to folks like us).

Conor

__________________________________________________

Conor Kenny
Senior Editor, OpenCongress.org

Sunlight Foundation

cke...@sunlightfoundation.com
 202-742-1520 x223
Twitter.com/ConorKenny

[Paul Blumenthal]

I'm with Conor on this one. That's a pretty explosive and offensive quote. "Senators prefer..." Is that the slogan of the Senate?

Publish the XML!

--
Paul Blumenthal
Senior Writer | Sunlight Foundation
Twitter: PaulBlu | 202-742-1520 ext.229

[Joshua Gay]

XML is actually a lot of work to write and maintain. Let's lower the
bar on our demands if we are going to make any. Looking at this roll
call URL, "http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&",
we know they keep track of things with congress, session, and vote
number. If we add bioguide ID and how the senator voted, we would have
plenty of information. Here is an JSON data structure of what it might
look like:

{"congress": "111", "session":"1", "vote_number":"00154",
"bioguide_id":"A000069", "vote_cast":"Yea"}

-Josh

[John Wonderlich]

It's kept in XML, and was once made public, in part, and then withdrawn.

[Joshua Gay]

Yes, i just noticed that, now, too. We even know exactly where in the
directory structure of their computer it lives :-/ A line in the HTML
file I was just looking at reads:

"vote_110_2_00215.xml Version: 14.1 was generated at: Saturday,
December 13, 2008: 2:48 AM EST in folder:
/Senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1102"

--
<http://joshuagay.org>

[Joshua Gay]

And I see the Clerk in the House provides it in a nice format, too,
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll003.xml

:-/

-Josh

--
<http://joshuagay.org>

[John Wonderlich]

While you're rooting around, you may notice that the opposite is true for committee schedules -- no central structured schedule data for the House, while the Senate offers this:

http://senate.gov/pagelayout/committees/b_three_sections_with_teasers/committee_hearings.htm

(XML link on middle upper-right)

[Derek Willis]

This is kind of beside the point - the Senate *already* produces XML.
They just don't make it public. So I think in this case it's entirely
reasonable to ask for the XML, because they already do it. Go to any
Senate vote page:

http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00154

Hit View Source, and do a find for .xml. They mention the xml source
in the HTML.

Derek

On Apr 3, 2:55 pm, Joshua Gay <joshua...@gmail.com> wrote:
> XML is actually a lot of work to write and maintain. Let's lower the
> bar on our demands if we are going to make any.  Looking at this roll

> call URL, "http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_...",

[Josh Tauberer]

Anyway, I asked Senate website staff about it recently, and we'll see.

- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)

[Joshua Gay]

I just got a response from the Senate Library that states:

"Providing Senate roll call vote data in XML is under serious
consideration by both the Secretary of the Senate and the Senate Rules
Committee. If you submit a request to both the committee and the
Secretary, might help.
"You can call the Secretary of the Senate, Nancy Erickson at
202-224-3622 or write to her - room S-312 in the U.S. Capitol.
"You can call Rules http://rules.senate.gov/public/ at
202-224-6352 or submit a letter to the chairman - room SR-305.
"You'll find a bit more info about snail mail to the Senate at
http://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_contact_senators.htm."

Maybe we could create a public petition online and collect signatures
and then send it to them? (If anybody has an instance of
CivicCRM/Drupal up and running, doing online petitions with signatures
is really simple.)

--
<http://joshuagay.org>

[Aron Pilhofer]

I don;t think we need a public petition. I think we get everyone we know to call and ask for it. we can drum up at least a dozen media orgs for this, right derek?

-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aron Pilhofer
Editor, Interactive News Technology,
The New York Times
Phone: 212-556-5849
Email: ar...@nytimes.com

[Joshua Gay]

Aron,

I agree, we don't need a petition. We should get people to make phone calls.

Would someone on this list mind doing a blog post suggesting people
make the phone call and perhaps providing a sample of what you might
say? That would be a good thing to push through various social media
-- digg, slashdot, retwitters/redents, etc.

As an aside, one of the things I like about petitions (especially ones
that are created in collaboration by a community) are that they leave
a nice paper trail. So, if we fail to achieve our goals, people in the
future can come back, see the arguments that were made, see the
signatures that indicate people agreed with the arguments, and in
turn, learn from what happened. Of course, we can achieve the same
thing without doing a petition (in fact, this archived mailing list is
achieving that goal to some extent, even if its not a peer-produced
and cohesive argument). I just thought I'd share that point in case we
see an opportunity for something similar to emerge --- not to argue
that a petition is necessary :-)

-Josh

--
<http://joshuagay.org>