GradeGov.com

This article was originally posted By Ellen Miller on http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com

"Politico’s Victoria McGrane wrote a piece that got my attention about a new Web site that might help congressional lawmakers stay in touch with their constitutents. The site, GradeGov.com, is still in production, but is supposed to launch next week. It has as its motto: “They work for you. Remind them.” The site’s goal is to give average Americans a means through which they can have their views reach lawmakers without going through the filter of newspapers, pundits, pollsters or paid staff. This sounds all well and good.

GradeGov.com will be designed to allow users to grade individual congressional lawmakers’ performance, write letters and read others, and help users find and follow lawmakers. The site will require users to log in and provide their ZIP code, among other information, so lawmakers can tell where the users that has graded them lives (i.e., whether they are a constituent or not).

After reading McGrane’s article, several of us here at Sunlight put our heads together in order to suggest what we hope is helpful advice. Here are some of our thoughts and questions:

As the article says, the site’s target community is “average voters” with an overall “nonpartisan” bent. With the outliers of obviously corrupt/incompetent lawmakers aside, there is no consensus in American politics of how to rate politicians. For aggregate evaluation to succeed, there must be some general idea of what “good” and “bad” are."
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