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Nonprofits sue Legislature over electronic voting record
December 4th, 2008, 6:00 am · 7 Comments · posted by BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento Correspondent
Two public interest nonprofits are suing the state Legislature over its refusal to turn over an electronic record of its official votes.
The suit is being brought by the California First Amendment Coalition, which fights for open records, and MAPLight.org, an online project that links lawmakers votes with their campaign contributions.
The state Legislature provides free on the Web a database of its votes, but the interface is rather unwieldy. MAPLight would like to access the raw data and repackage it for sorting and analysis. (That would allow them to figure out, for example, who votes “no” the most.)
When I first started working on the Capitol back in early 2006, I asked for a copy of the database, but was rebuffed.
Over the years, I’ve gotten to know the leaders of both groups, Peter Scheer of the coalition and Daniel Newman of MAPLight. Both are staunch defenders of the people’s right to know. I suspect their suit has a good shot because the data is already publicly available.
And besides, what could be more fundamental to the people than access to their lawmakers’ votes?
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How much additional expenses will have to be used in order to get this data? Can the State charge the organization requesting the data a fee for preparing such in a manner they want the information provided to them?
How much are these organizations willing to pay for the data to be formatted in a way they want it to be presented.
The State charges for raw data in various areas. I hope they can do the same in this case, too.
I like the free service:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html
The liberal Obamacrats in the California state Legislature vote YES on spending our money YES on illegals and NO on spending cuts and no on drilling for oil and building oil refineries. —CASECLOSED—
Regarding post #1 above, we are not asking the state to do any additional work. We are asking for a copy of information the state already possesses, in the state’s already existing database format. We are wiling to pay the costs to duplicate the data (such as the cost of writing the data to a CD-ROM).
Daniel Newman
Executive Director
MAPLight.org
Caseclosed, take your tired rhetoric somewhere else please, it doesn’t belong here.
Hey Bruce…Pipe down!
Just because caseclosed hit the nail on the head and the truth bothers you doesn’t give you the right or anyone else to shut down debate.
Democrats have controlled the legislature in California for decades and look at the messes they’ve created again and again. Time for change. Time to stop the overspending.
The only thing closed about “caseclosed” is the mind.
People who want to prohibit public information from getting to the public are scary. However, that is a separate matter from them having no business wasting tax dollars trying to stop the public’s right to know.
Now I imagine some legislators don’t want the public to know which lobbyists bought their vote, but, too damn bad.
Gina;
Very impressive and great passion in your words. I once heard lawmakers described a venial. I would go further and say most are not statesmen but organized crime members. This is why you are always hearing about the corruption charges.