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Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

whoaremyrepresentatives.org

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Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#151

Post by saurik »

mandelbulb wrote: post #72
saurik wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it yields detail clear down to local offices It has city councils, but it doesn't have any local districts. In Sunnyvale, you are also being represented on at least the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District[1], the El Camino Health Care District[2], and the Santa Clara Valley Water District[3]. If you are curious how I figured this out, I went to the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation website, which has…

Why do so much work and post on HN instead of sending them a quick mail?

I don't think the people who make this website don't know this is a limitation, and I especially don't think that they have some database they are hand editing with new information I might provide on this thread: my comment and information (which also wasn't "so much work": it took a few minutes; I attended a couple years of meetings of the Santa Barbara LAFCO and so I know how this stuff all works) is only relevant in the context of this thread as a reply to the comment making the website sound more local than it really is?

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#152

Post by saurik »

deathhand wrote: post #65
saurik wrote: post #27

This website believes the Auditor-Controller for Santa Barbara County is Robert Geis, but he retired last March and was replaced by Theodore A. Fallati. I also wouldn't say that it is fair to say that this is "everyone": it is missing all of the local special districts (such as the Goleta Water District and the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District) that I would argue are much more important to my life than the per…

Congratulations on the win. What was the most difficult thing about breaking into politics? Did you have a career beforehand? Thank you for your time and service.

Here is a talk I gave at a conference, 360|interesect (which focuses on what technologists do in their spare time "while away from the keyboard"), on some of my motivations; this was before I started actually running for offices, though.

https://vimeo.com/126618332

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#153

Post by losvedir »

jelder wrote: post #75

Severely inaccurate results for me. Gave me reps for CT but I live in MA. Edit: typo

Maybe you were like me and assumed that the "address" input just meant street address, since there's a separate zip input? I did that (#### lawrence st) and then it interpreted my street address to be in a different state. Instead you need to put in your address including city and state. I'm not actually sure what the zip code input is for.

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#154

Post by CodeWriter23 »

epoch_100 wrote: post #133
WhitneyLand wrote: post #132

Fantastic service. Should it then link to their position all the top issues, like for, against, or refuses to commit? By the way, my address has 30 people, all the same color.

That would be an interesting continuation of the site... we will look into it. And as for all your reps being the same color, funny how democracy works out like that...

I'd say also deep linking into followthemoney.org would help more thoroughly explore a politician's alignment on issues.

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#155

Post by DrScump »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #134
saurik wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it yields detail clear down to local offices It has city councils, but it doesn't have any local districts. In Sunnyvale, you are also being represented on at least the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District[1], the El Camino Health Care District[2], and the Santa Clara Valley Water District[3]. If you are curious how I figured this out, I went to the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation website, which has…

Just as a heads up to people using this (and the creators), it also appears to be missing the thousands of elected school board members that make decisions for school districts

Having an exhaustively thorough scope of all elective offices, rather than the most-sought subset, magnifies the task tenfold or more, especially if that data isn't already available to them in their existing sources. Such critiques strike me as unduly harsh.

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#156

Post by DrScump »

ourmandave wrote: post #73
DrScump wrote: post #25

Actually, this title doesn't do the service justice -- it yields detail clear down to local offices and gives a detail '+' link for each to get details like contact information. For example, this is what is returned for a given, random Sunnyvale, CA address; the lone change I would suggest is to have the county and then city offices listed last to maintain a sequence of decreasing granularity. Note that Sunnyvale is…

If I'm ever pulled over in Sunnyvale (or anywhere) I can do a quick search with this site and then yell at the cop, "I pay your boss, Laurie Smith's salary!" Then it's just a quick jump over to the ACLU's Know Your Rights page... https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights

Uh, only unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County (and those few cities who subcontract law enforcement to the county, like Cupertino) fall under Smith's direct purview. Like most cities, Sunnyvale has its own P.D. (Department of Public Safety, in Sunnyvale's case -- combined Police and Fire).

That said, the jurisdiction of any given sworn law enforcement officer in CA is statewide, so any officer could pull you over regardless of what city you're in, theoretically.

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#157

Post by nxc18 »

DrScump wrote: post #155
r0m4n0 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a heads up to people using this (and the creators), it also appears to be missing the thousands of elected school board members that make decisions for school districts

Having an exhaustively thorough scope of all elective offices, rather than the most-sought subset, magnifies the task tenfold or more, especially if that data isn't already available to them in their existing sources. Such critiques strike me as unduly harsh.

This is a great website, but the title claims to find "everyone" who represents you, but it doesn't. Its a good product decision to limit the scope, but the title needs to be clear about the limitations.

It is important that people know the breadth of government if only as a civil exercise.

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#158

Post by ada1981 »

epoch_100 wrote: post #126
Tau_Zero wrote: post #118

Sounds like an awesome service. Unfortunately, I'm seeing: Error 403 Daily Limit Exceeded. The quota will be reset at midnight Pacific Time (PT). You may monitor your quota usage and adjust limits in the API Console: https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/civicinfo/quo...

We reached out to Google, and they increased our quota. Try now!

A good opportunity for you to include a "donate now" button when the service is down :)

Re: Enter your address and find out everyone who represents you in U.S. government

#160

Post by memco »

mistermann wrote: post #120
epoch_100 wrote: post #97

To everyone posting here: I am a creator of this service. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email secure@politiwatch.org! We're extremely encouraged by all the positive feedback here, and we're glad to provide a service that you all found helpful.

I hope you consider greatly expanding the scope of what this service does. Someone needs to take a new approach to educating citizens about issues in an objective, non-biased manner. Democracy is in a really poor state imho, things like this are what's needed to repair it.

> Someone needs to take a new approach to educating citizens about issues in an objective, non-biased manner

Not just issues, but even just positions. I honestly have no idea what several of these people's jobs are let alone their personal character and values. Would be handy for this site to link to a description of the position on wikipedia to find out what ways this person would be in a position to effect change in my life.

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