POPVOX: Ensuring Congress Hears

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from Netted by the Webbys that had election related apps and websites. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to highlight some of their finds before the election was upon us. But, one of the sites will be very useful to us even when the election is totally over.

The site is called POPVOX, and it gives constituents a chance to more effectively communicate with Congress. Basically, POPVOX asks you to create an account so they can verify whether or not you are a legitimate constituent. Once that's accomplished, they have bills pending before Congress on their website, and you choose to support or oppose them. After you've done this, you have the option of commenting on the legislation and sharing what you find via social media.

One of the major stands of POPVOX is not editorializing, so instead of commenting on the bills themselves, they let advocacy organizations log onto POPVOX and give their two cents.They also tabulate the number of people who are supporting or opposing each bill, and tracking what they are saying about them.

In addition to bill information, POPVOX contains info on Members of Congress, states, and districts. This gives you an idea of what is going on, and also makes it easy for Congress to see what people are concerned about. Ultimately, POPVOX gives you an easy way to look up what bills are coming down the pike, and then gives you an easy way to say something about them.

The result; congress hears what you say. The POPVOX site comments, "When the information coming into your Members of Congress is public, counted, sorted and searchable, your voice is amplified — and Congress can’t ignore it."

If you are interested, you can visit the Why POPVOX Works page for more information.