CapitolBells

I would love to bring it to countries all over the world. Both the real-time coverage and crowd-lobbying aspects can be applied to any democracy in theory. I think I first people need to get excited about it here in the US, so I can get this project better finances, build a team, and start expanding. Right now I am the only person who works on this full time.

Right now I am outsourcing most of the spoofing security to Google and Facebook, which are essentially identity management platforms. The other protection I am implementing prevents you from continually switching districts. After a certain limit, you will be warned to stop carpetbagging, then you'll be locked in. Additionally, changing districts updates all your votes to your current district. The incentive is to vote from your own district.

Just for comparison, Congressional offices don't really do anything besides ask for your zip code or address to confirm you are a constituent, so you can call every single office if you want and tell them you live there.

I think my most important hack is my first, getting the actual vote alerts, because that makes it effortless to keep tabs on our elected officials and gives an easy way to let them know that we are watching them. I found out that the buzzer/bell system in the Capitol office buildings were all connected by a central short range radio transmitter in the main building. Then once I confirmed that the signal itself was technically public, I set up a receiver at the same frequency and started figuring out what each signal actually meant and how it corresponded to actions taking place on the House floor. I get the data for the Senate too.

In this case, I'd say gaining access to public data, both physically and programmatically, that was for all intents and purposes unavailable to the general public. And for that matter CSPAN has made deals to try to keep the data I've hacked inaccessible for their own monopolistic benefit, being the sole corporate purveyor of live congressional floor coverage.

Politics.