For legislation, the columns would have gross bills, whose embedded decisions and regulations could be broken out at will. For example, the Clothing Improvement Bill could be shown on its own (great, my guy voted to improve clothing), and its internals could be broken out to show that, for example, one effect is that citizens and residents of Canadian descent are only allowed to wear red socks (oh, feh, my guy hates Canadians).
You could also ask for just the breakouts from all bills that are concerned with socks, for example.
Which would be hard, because big bills have lots of individual effects. But it would show exactly what your guy supported, on purpose, unknowingly or as a compromise. Heck, they might even like to see that, they could learn what they voted on after the fact. I'll bet a lot of them still don't know in total what they voted for in the Affordable Care Act.
Each vote would also indicate things like if the member had more responsibility than just being a member, like on the relevant committee. A no-show here should be embarrassing. Or if the vote specifically impacts his region.
Bonus points to do this analysis all the way back to the beginning of the Republic.
If you're interested in volunteering some dev time on some creative ways of getting involved, let me know! My email is [email protected] :)
EDIT: http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1geg2t/senators_skip_c...
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Here for example is the view of Dianne Feinstein (CA D): http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/300043_Dianne_Feinst...
Her full voting record: http://www.opencongress.org/people/voting_history/300043_Dia...
You can also access their data directly or via API: http://www.opencongress.org/about/code
I would use the same technique Apple used to change minds when the iPhone was new. Come up with bite-sized ads, and play them like regular ads, many times, but instead of advertising for a product, they should educate.
The media is doing a terrible job at this. The same way Google tries to force ISPs to change with Google Fiber, we should try forcing the media to step up by putting them in a bad light, by focusing on the important problems they're ignoring.
Imagine 30 second ads that focus on non-partisan information, stats not emotions, factual information like current laws and how they're not followed, a focus on a more global picture, on something more long term, something that would make you think and be more aware.
There's a lot of misinformation out there. We know this from the numerous polls that show large number of people believing things that are factually and provably not true.
We need to correct that first.
EFF, ACLU, and other organizations like these are trying, but they're not reaching most people. We need to reach and educate the people who have been turned off by the current state of affairs.
We need Twitter-size ads that people would find interesting and that would wet their appetite to seek out more and get involved.
I think you're right. The amount of abuse in the government and corporate sector has gone out of control.
We already forgot the atrocities of the 2008 financial crisis, which wrecked numerous families and households, and caused real deaths. As far as I know, none of the senior management was held accountable. Same people who invaded the market with toxic assets are still invited for dinners at the White House.
The NSA scandal will be similarly toned down and forgotten, unless we change our attitude.
The retarted amount of money our government spends on "defense" and other things... Think about how much better we can do with the worlds best engineers and 1/10th of the defense budget. Ugh