5 ms·
Ask HN: Political activism platform
After recently coming across news that representatives in my state have introduced problematic and comparatively faulty legislation in the upcoming session, I've been moved to start a bit of a grassroots effort locally to combat the passage of those bills.
I've seen quite a few sites that allow people to enter their zip code and find their representative, does anyone know how I can find, or has anyone written and open-sourced this kind of lookup implementation?
Failing that, are there any platforms that this community would recommend that would allow a simple landing page with copy text, facts and info with linked sources, and then a web form to find their representative? Perhaps even a WordPress plugin that I should look at and build on top of?
Ultimately I'm trying to avoid people leaving the page to perform the lookup since I can't guarantee that the receiving site will either handle incoming load, remain online, or even have the most up to date rep info. If someone's leaving the page, I'm hoping it's primarily to read linked sources from the "facts and info" section.
Thanks!
- chishaku 10y agoCongressional info API including ability to "Look up members of Congress by location or by zip code." https://sunlightlabs.github.io/congress/ https://sunlightlabs.github.io/congress/ Open States API for info on state legislators: https://openstates.org/ https://openstates.org/ City council info for Chicago, Philly and NYC: https://www.councilmatic.org/ https://www.councilmatic.org/
- Raed667 10y agohttps://democracy.io https://democracy.io
- iamdave 10y agoThis looks like exactly what I'd need, I'll email about their email API.
- jamesmp98 10y agoOut of interest? What state?
- joeclark77 10y agoHis bio says he's in Austin, which is in (or at least surrounded by) Texas.
- iamdave 10y ago(or at least surrounded by) Ha, yeah that's one way to put it
- Mz 10y agohttps://www.usa.gov/elected-officials https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials https://www.usa.gov/developer https://www.usa.gov/developer http://whoismyrepresentative.com/api http://whoismyrepresentative.com/api There are wordpress plugins: https://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress+plugin+find+my+representative&oq=wordpress+plugin+find+my+repres&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j33.17133j0j4&client=tablet-android-digiland&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress+plugin+find+my+rep... This map can be embedded on your website: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/map https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/map
- iamdave 10y agoAll great resources, thank you!
- sjs382 10y agoAre you looking up representatives on the federal or state level? Fair warning, if you're looking up state reps, a zip code lookup could return multiple (sometimes 10+) representatives per zip. Source: In my day job, I've built many one-off issue advocacy pages on both the state and federal levels. Feel free to ping me if you want to talk about it.
- iamdave 10y agoState level. I'll email you my ideas, thanks!
- id122015 10y agowell done! Programmers should be more involved in politics, and not on government's side, but on people's side. There are many examples what to do about it: transparent voting, list and rank all public sector employees, etc