4 ms·

It might be useful to be able to toggle a "Details of next election" overlay, bringing up info on how vulnerable each representative is in his or her next prima

It might be useful to be able to toggle a "Details of next election" overlay, bringing up info on how vulnerable each representative is in his or her next primary and general elections. This would allow people to focus attention on the few representatives who have close races coming up. My guess is these candidates will be by far the most receptive to public opinion. Even better would be to include information on challengers and their stance on SOPA as well. That would make it easy to focus attention on ideal candidates: those who are for SOPA and have close races coming up against challengers who are against it. Maybe we can get a couple of them to switch. Let me know if you think that's a good idea and want help implementing it. My email's in my profile.

danso 15y ago
You read my mind...I had actually thought about that and put it off because...the FEC data is just an annoying unnormalized Excel spreadsheet. It wouldn't be hard to include, I just didn't get to it yet.
- seagreen 15y ago
  Another good feature would be a summary of how SOPA currently stands, or a link to a website that has that information and keeps it current. I love HN, but it is NOT the place to get up to date political info. I believe at one point there were articles saying "SOPA postponed until January" and "SOPA will be voted on before Christmas" up at the same time. Also, a lot of those representatives have facebook pages. Is it worth SOPA opponents time to go on there and give them a hard time in the comments, or should we stick to phone calls? It might be worth including a link to their FB pages anyway, though I'm not sure on this one.
  - danso 15y ago
    Yep, that was one of my feature creep ideas too: http://sopaopera.org/sopa/ http://sopaopera.org/sopa/ Unfortunately I decided on an ad-hoc database model for "Events" (when I originally just wanted to record statements by congressmembers) and never quite got reorganized in time. Not too hard to rectify, of course. In case you're wondering, there is an official place to get this info...the Library of Congress's THOMAS system: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@X http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@X There's still a lot of space for people who can create the links between entities, though...

danso 15y ago

You read my mind...I had actually thought about that and put it off because...the FEC data is just an annoying unnormalized Excel spreadsheet. It wouldn't be hard to include, I just didn't get to it yet.

seagreen 15y ago
Another good feature would be a summary of how SOPA currently stands, or a link to a website that has that information and keeps it current. I love HN, but it is NOT the place to get up to date political info. I believe at one point there were articles saying "SOPA postponed until January" and "SOPA will be voted on before Christmas" up at the same time. Also, a lot of those representatives have facebook pages. Is it worth SOPA opponents time to go on there and give them a hard time in the comments, or should we stick to phone calls? It might be worth including a link to their FB pages anyway, though I'm not sure on this one.
- danso 15y ago
  Yep, that was one of my feature creep ideas too: http://sopaopera.org/sopa/ http://sopaopera.org/sopa/ Unfortunately I decided on an ad-hoc database model for "Events" (when I originally just wanted to record statements by congressmembers) and never quite got reorganized in time. Not too hard to rectify, of course. In case you're wondering, there is an official place to get this info...the Library of Congress's THOMAS system: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@X http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03261:@@@X There's still a lot of space for people who can create the links between entities, though...