Let Your Voice Be Heard

Tonight, I'm excited, and not by the way I've typically been "excited" for most of the past week. My love of technology and my love of politics have met up in the discovery of an application for my Android smartphone: Visible Vote. Now before I lose you iPhone or Blackberry users (or people who don't care about the smarthpone revolution), let me point out that these guys have an iPhone app, a BlackBerry app, a Facebook application, and a Windows/Mac application. (Sorry Linux users, it doesn't appear to work with WINE without some tweaking.)

This application allows you to cast votes just as your Congressmen do, then compare your votes with theirs. The application aggregates the responses of the users who cast votes, and faxes weekly vote tallies to each Congressional office. On top of the other mad letter-writing, phone-line-melting down, and email blitz campaigns we often engage in, this is yet another way to let Congress know exactly how we feel. Plus, after your congressmen cast their vote for the same bill, it lets you know exactly how their votes match up with yours -- in other words, it makes it easy to follow and see exactly how they're doing (if you didn't know already). And in the current highly partisan political climate, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some people weren't surprised to see how well (or poorly) their Congressmen are doing.

On top of all of that, this gives another way to get more people educated, increase political awareness, and involved in the democratic process. I'd encourage all of you to check it out and pass it on, whether or not you're a geek like me!