Monitoring

Your personal monitoring list is the way that you can easily track and monitor the legislation you are interested in. Through the Tracking Information form you can also save your support or opposition to a bill. This will be used to compare your stance to the roll call information of elected officials.

To add a bill to your list, click the Monitor Bill button in the Tracking Information form on the bill detail page.

To remove a bill from your list, click the Unmonitor button in the Tracking Information form on the bill detail page.

Views

  Direct Links

To allow easy access to the most recent version of a particular bill in the most recent session, eLobbyist uses a uniform URL scheme. Each bill detail page also includes a permalink for that exact session version of the bill. You can access the most recent version of a bill number, its most recent text and a list of votes with the following formats using California and ficticious Assembly Bill XXXX:

e-Lobbyist.com/CA/ABXXXX -- main bill detail and information

e-Lobbyist.com/CA/ABXXXX/text -- text of most recent draft of the bill

e-Lobbyist.com/CA/ABXXXX/votes -- listing of voting records

  Browser

The basic legislation listing, by most recent action date. Includes basic information on the abstract of the bill, the last action description and date.

  Sponsor

Sponsorship implies a basic support or involvement with a bill, this list of bills will show all the legislation that an individual has been identified to be a sponsor.

  Committee

Committees often recommend the basic Do Pass/Do Not Pass decision on legislation, the list of bills is what the system determines to be pending action in a particular committee.

  Subject

Bill subject areas identify, in a broad sense, the topic or intention of a bill, this view lists all the bills that have been identified to be associated with a particular subject area.

  Citation

This view attempts to analyze the different code sections that the bill creates, strikes and amends. Unfortunately it is sometimes difficult to automate this analysis, therefore it is currently only available in a limited number of states. You will find it in the bill detail view, which uniquely identifies each section of code and displays views that reference the same section of law.

Public Commentary

On each bill detail page you will find an area linking to a public discussion forum for the bill. Registered users may leave comments voicing their support or opposition to the bill. Obviously, the views of random people on the internet in no way reflect the opinions of eLobbyist LLC or any of its officers, kthxbai.

RSS & Syndication

Most views in eLobbyist allow for individual RSS feeds. You will find an RSS icon on bill list pages, more modern browsers should also detect the feed and allow you to subscribe to your individualize feed. You can also use feeds to include information and bill status on your blogs and social networks.

Searching

Users also gain access to keyword searches by individual state or all 50 state legislatures and US Congress. You may also search for a particular bill number as well.

Saved Searches

Users can also save keyword searches, and optionally create a personalized RSS feed that you can use to monitor individual saved searches.

Bill Text

In select states the bill detail page will include a list of available bill texts as it moves through the legislative process.

Roll Calls

Where available this lists the available roll calls from the entire body or committee for passage of legislative motions. Lists the yea, nay, nv/absent status of the respective members.

Data Sets & API

Our free 2010 legislative data archives are now in open testing Legislative Datasets. This is an archive of several CSV files for each of the 50 states and US Congress. Containing the master bill list, then supporting lists for history, sponsors and roll call. Read more about the data export contents.

Access to real time data from live sessions will be made available through our upcoming LegiScan API release.

Note: On Bill Numbers

Read more On Bill Numbers and how they are formatted and any exceptions we have to make in order to normalize 51 legislative bodies.