Open States is a collection of tools that make it possible for citizens to
track what is happening in their state's capitol by aggregating information
from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. From the homepage, you may enter a U.S. address or select a state to start to research bills, review voting records and contact elected officials. Because it is often convenient to get all of a state's data for testing or offline use, the site also offers downloads of our data. Open States is a project of the non-profit Sunlight Foundation, an organization that repackages public government information to enable individuals better access to open data. Other projects by the Sunlight Foundating include:
- Influence Explorer connects the dots of political contributions on the federal and state level allowing you to track influence by lawmaker, company or prominent individual.
- Capitol Words explores the most popular words and phrases used by legislators in the U.S. Congress. Search the data from 1996 to today by state, date or politician.
- Open Congress brings together official government data with news and blog coverage, social networking, public participation tools.
- Docket Wrench enables research into the rulemaking process of federal agencies with tracking of similar public comments and entity matching for a complete picture of their influence across millions of documents.
You may view a tutorial of Open States below.
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