Maplight finds connections b/w money and politics

By Vivek | May 17th, 2007 at 10:25 pm ET         

Political news doesn’t find place in my daily workflow. But when we have search engine revealing juicy details about how money flows in the world of politics, I think things get interesting enough. Officially launched yesterday, MAPLight provides easy access to politics+money data so that you can find the statistics you need for your story. MAPLight 3 person team has developed a pretty comprehensive feature list including maps/graphs and ability to follow money trails.

Below is taste of the questions you can find quickly answers for which you had no real way to get information on before:

• How closely does a vote in Congress correlate with special-interest contributions?
• Which organizations and industries support and oppose key federal bills?
• How much money was spent by special interests on each side of a bill, and did legislators receive funds in the final days preceding a vote?

MAPLight.org was in fact launched in October 2006. But at that time, the site showcased on the data from the California legislature. Positive reviews and upcoming elections resulted in the new release that focuses on data from all the states. MAPLight claims to be a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization while depending on the community to make donations and keep things humming around just fine. All the founding principles sound great, but eventually it will the sheer volume of the data MAPLight would be able to collect that will make a big difference in times to come.

Links:
Maplight
Maplight DEMO