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| - From: Mitch Downey Date: Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 6:22 PM Hi Newswire, We're big admirers of the work being done here, and we're excited to share with you a technology we hope will enable people to take a more active and informed role in their government or organization. Our project is called EveryVote, and will be hosted at . EveryVote will be an open-source, non-profit civic engagement social network platform, and will rely on donations and grant funding to subsist. Since anyone can add their own government with its own parameters into the platform, EV can also be used as a civics education tool for students to run their student councils, or for teachers and parents to run their PTA. Our goal is to enable all world governments and organizations the opportunity to use the EV platform. At the core of EveryVote will be the complete and up-to-date legislative and electoral body of any governing body. For EveryVote's debut, we will be drawing off the comprehensive legislation data of the US Congress that is already available in API format online (available through a site like ). Our goal is to keep this tool as intuitive and attractive to use to as we can, meanwhile providing a number of useful features that to our knowledge are not offered in existing legislation tracking websites. We are still in very early stages of development, and if any members of the Newswire listserv would be interested in volunteering to help create this platform, we'd love your help. Our primary goal is to present a video introduction and a PowerPoint presentation of the functionality of the EV platform at Transparency Camp ( ) and its related Hackathon at George Mason University between April 28-30. We have begun to actively seek grant funding, and since the vision for EV is pretty vast, we expect to need to hire full and part-time help in order for EV to be finished and sustained. For now at least, we have no funding, so we are only seeking volunteers. To explain what we find so compelling about the functionality of the EveryVote platform, we're posting below this correspondence our most recent draft of a narration that will be used for an introductory animation, which we plan to have completed by 4/21/2012. If you visit www.everyvote.org, you can find this narration along with images and visual design documents to help you picture the functionality. If you are interested in collaborating on EveryVote in any capacity (coding, design, legal assistance, outreach, anything), please send an email to contactus@everyvote.org. Also, let us know if you think EveryVote could help with your project, as we plan to set it up as a convenient hub for as many empowering technologies available on the internet as possible. Thank you for your time and consideration Newswire listserv! Keep up the great work. Mitch Downey mitch@everyvote.org Northern Illinois University Vincent Schramer vincent@everyvote.org Northern Illinois University --- You want to get more involved in your government, but where do you begin? Right now there are over 7,500 bills before the US Congress, and nearly as many at the state and local levels. How can you stay well-informed and active in government, and still have time for a life of your own? With EveryVote.org, your Digital Political Assistant. EveryVote is a non-profit, open-source, civic engagement social network platform that helps users find the objective political information most relevant to them, and offers a variety of tools that make civic engagement easier than ever. Although it will make its debut containing all the legislative and electoral data of the US Congress, the EveryVote platform can be used with any government or organization with a legislative or electoral process. To understand how EveryVote can help you get more civically engaged, let's take a quick tour... Start at EveryVote by signing up for a profile, and begin browsing the site. As you scroll through lists of actual bills, elections, officials, users, and groups or organizations; you can select the bills, individuals, or groups you support or oppose. You can keep these votes private, or opt to share them with the EV community. The more you cast, the more EveryVote can show you how your votes compare to the votes of others. Using EveryVote's dynamic databoxes, you can learn at a glance how the officials, candidates, users, and groups you support or oppose stand on legislation. After casting some votes, you can see at a glance how the people or groups you support or oppose are voting on each bill, displayed as a percent correlation. If all of the officials you support vote in favor of this bill, a green +100% displays in the upper-leftmost box. If all of them were in opposition to this bill, the same box would display a red -100%, and any other combination would display somewhere in between. To learn more, you can hover your cursor over the box and see how each person or group in that category voted; move the cursor over a name to view that user's explanation for their vote; and click the explanation to begin a dialogue with that user. Dynamic databoxes are also found next to the profile pictures of individuals and groups on the site. These display the % correlation between your own voting record and the voting record of that person or group. For example, if you and George voted the same on 8 out of 10 officials, the uppermost field would display an 80% correlation. If you both voted the same on only 2 out of 10 officials, that field would display a value of 20%. Roll your cursor over the box to see a head-to-head comparison of your votes; slide the cursor over a person or group's name to see their explanation; and click if you'd like to send a message to that user. You can also click the total supporters, opposers, and trackers fields below the picture to display demographic data of those users. In addition to vote tracking and discussion functionality, EveryVote lets you submit posts and links into the EV content management system -- similar to reddit's system -- by sliding out the Track Bar on the left-hand side of the screen. By clicking a name in your Track Bar, you will be taken to that bill, individual, or group's subforum, where you can browse the user submitted posts and links receiving the most attention from the EV community. Think more people should see this link? Vote the story up. Think this story is a waste of time or misinformation? Vote the story down. What's more, EveryVote even lets you filter the CMS page to count only votes from supporters, opposers, or undecideds when sorting the stories, making it easier than ever to hear all sides of the issue. Although not required for basic site use, EveryVote has advanced social networking capabilities, allowing you to send messages and friend requests to other users, post status updates, send out event invitations, participate in debate threads, administer and participate in polls, and more. Plus, EveryVote will be cross-over compatible with the world's largest social network -- Facebook -- and will have an app version for iOS and Android mobile devices, allowing you to take EV with you everywhere, up until the moment you enter the voting booth. EveryVote will also help you participate in local elections by helping sending reminders of upcoming voting registration deadlines and election days to your email or Facebook account. And if you decide to run for office yourself, declare your intention to run through EveryVote.org, and receive assistance with every step of the candidate registration process -- from gathering petition signatures, submitting calls for volunteers, to helping your supporters make campaign donations right through your EV profile. Last but not least, EveryVote can be used as a powerful and fun experiential-learning tool for civics education. Since the platform allows anyone to add their own governing body with its own custom rules, students can use EveryVote to manage and participate in their student councils, helping them propose and vote on legislation, debate ideas, hold elections, and more. In fact, school PTAs, teachers unions, and any other organization that wants to can freely make use of these features at EveryVote.org. With EveryVote, staying civically engaged has never been easier. Visit www.everyvote.org today :)
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