Congressional maps at Govtrack.us

You may have noticed that I have added a bunch of new links on the sidebar. I will post a bit about each of them in detail, but I just want to quickly point out that govtrack.us has an amazing interactive map of Congressional districts. It's Google-powered, so it has the familiar Google Maps interface.

There are many resources for finding your elected officials. Congresspedia and the official Web site of the U.S. House have a descent ZIP-to-district searches, but they don't include anything about local officials. The Census Bureau has a very thorough one.

When I made my own ZIP-to-district look-up (I will post the code soon), I linked to Project Vote Smart, because I think they are the best one-stop shop for state, local, and federal information. Of course, I am biased.

The Voter's Speakeasy

I'm going to make a lot of changes to this blog in the coming days, but Blogspot is moving agonizingly slow today, so this will probably be all I do before tomorrow.

Project Vote Smart has a new official blog called The Voter's Speakeasy. It's an excellent way to stay up-to-date on PVS, and gives additional insight into the work we do.

Full disclosure: I guess I haven't said it in this blog before, but I work in PVS in the Key Votes department.

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Links:

The Voter's Speakeasy

Welcome back, dear reader

Like several blogs before this one, I started this one enthusiastically, but my inspiration dried up. In fact, I gave up on this one faster than any of its predecessors, because I spent all day using a computer, and this felt more like my job than a diverting hobby.

But I've changed my wanton ways. Over the next few days, weeks, months, years (well...) I will post to this blog again. So keep an eye out!

Adding ZIP-to-district look-up

Hey, a bunch of neat web sites have a neat-o feature where you can enter in your nine-digit ZIP and find out your congressional district. I put one on my blog, cannibalizing the one on Congresspedia. However, I used Project Vote Smart's results, because I think they are more complete.

I hope to put a widget on my blog to make adding this to your own blog a one-step process.

Google AdSense

After some deliberation, I decided to include Google Adsense on my blog. Making money on a blog has never interested me particularly, I am much more concerned with generating something useful, interesting, and fun for me and people who share my interests.

But I was swayed by a friend who uses Google ads on his blog. He convinced me that this could provide me with some capital that I could reinvest in the blog itself, adding features like a registered domain, etc.

Anyway, this will definitely improve the quality of this blog by providing me an incentive to post faithfully.

The end of the electoral college?

I first read about this state-level movement on Red State Rebels, a blog for progressives in Idaho.

Thanks to this tool from Source Labs, I can put a Digg button right on the post. I'm still experimenting with it.

Poor, neglected blog

I was inspired to start a blog about a month ago. But as the workload in my new job increased, this side project went by the boards. Now I am returning to it, hoping that instead of competing with my job for time and energy, it can assist me.

I work for the 'Key Votes' department at Project Vote Smart, which means I have to be knowledgeable about both internet research and the inner workings of Congress. The first part is easy, but when I started here a month ago, this represented the extent of my knowledge about Congress: