The Thicket at State Legislatures

Wikis Make Gains in Government and Legislatures

by Pam Greenberg

Wikis are slowly finding a place in government and in state legislatures. Wikis allow users to add and edit content on a web page, taking advantage of the idea that a collective wisdom will create a better result.  Utah Representative Steve Urquhart's Politicopia, which we highlighted in 2007, was the first state legislative policy wiki. It created a place for citizens and legislators to discuss a number of policy issues facing the Utah Legislature. But wikis are also being used within and across government agencies. For example, Intellipedia is the U.S. intelligence community's wiki. California has a best practices wiki, where state employees can submit best practices in information technology, customer service, human resources and other areas.

Now, legislative technology staff in Idaho have developed Legipedia, a wiki that initially replicated a printed manual that is given to legislative attachés (session-only legislative staff) each year. The manual has instructions for new attachés about how to use the various computer applications within the legislature. The goals for the wiki were to reduce printing and distribution costs, expand the amount of information available to users, provide a faster and easier way to find information, and to "put the documentation process in the hands of the people actually doing the work so they can update the instructions to reflect the best way to handle tasks." The project was highlighted in a National Association of Legislative Information Technology newsletter article in Winter 2008, with a follow-up article in Summer 2008.

People Turn to the Internet to Reach Lawmakers

by Pam Greenberg

The Internet has become the primary source for learning about and communicating with Congress, according to research recently released by the Congressional Management Foundation.  And although Internet users want to hear from their U.S. Senators and Representatives, often they don't recall receiving a response to their communications, they are dissatisfied with the response they receive, or they feel members don't care about what they say.  Those surveyed think that information they receive from organizations they are affiliated with is more informative and trustworthy than information they receive from members of Congress. 

So, while more than 100 million Americans contacted Congress in the last five years (more than twice the rate contacting Congress in 2004), the report concludes that "it seems less actual communication is occurring.”

The report is disheartening in many ways, but it provides specific and concrete suggestions about ways lawmakers at all levels can better meet constituents' expectations.  A sampling of just a few:

• inviting citizens to take action through e-newsletters, town hall meetings and surveys
• reaching out to advocacy organizations that generate issue campaigns
• keeping citizens informed about policy issues
• changing the tone of responses to constituent communications.

The report is about congressional communications, but much of it is also applicable to state legislatures.

Making Legislators' Votes Available Online

by Karl Kurtz

Why do five of the fifty state legislatures (New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Vermont, and Washington) make comprehensive floor roll call votes on bills available online by legislator, while most states only provide online access to roll call votes by bill?  That was a question that we received from a researcher at the Kennedy School of Government who is doing a study of legislative information systems in Congress, the fifty states, and the 25 largest U.S. cities.  He adds that neither Congress nor the 25 city councils provide roll call voting information by legislator, making the five state legislatures that do even more unusual.

The researcher had some hypotheses in mind (district population and legislative salaries) that might explain why some states provide this information and others don't, but he wanted to know if we had other ideas.  Going on instinct alone and unburdened by any research or data, here was my response:

I'm not sure I have an answer for you.  A standard first question that political scientists would ask about this would be to check it against legislative professionalization.  Using the standard three levels of professionalization, among the five cases that you mention, two (NH and VT) are classic part-time citizen legislatures, one (NJ) is a professionalized ("full-time") legislature and two (NC and WA) are hybrid or in-between.  Nothing apparent there.  The professionalization measure is highly correlated with state population, and as you point out yourself, the NJ case belies a district population explanation.  The professionalization measure also includes compensation of legislators, which you suggest you want to test as an independent variable.  I would suggest using professionalization instead of compensation by itself, but I don't think either one will yield a useful result.

There's also no apparent regional or socio-economic factor among the five states.

The other thing that I would suggest is that roll call voting by legislator is highly political information, subject to misinterpretation and campaign demagoguery.  That's the main reason why most legislatures don't make the information easy to obtain.  It's inherently anti-incumbent information, and since incumbents run the system, they don't make a practice of releasing it.  With the exception of NJ, most of the legislatures that provide this information are somewhat less partisan than most, although there are plenty of others that are equally low in partisanship that don't make the info available.

With only five cases to go on, I think that idiosyncratic explanations will prevail.  For different reasons in each of these states, there is probably a tradition, a provision in the rules or constitution. or a whim of a leader that made roll call votes by legislator available online.  I know that's not a very satisfying explanation to a social scientist, but sometimes randomness does prevail!

Anybody have any better explanations?  If you're in one of the states that provide the roll call information by legislator, how was the decision made to make it available?  If you're in one that does not, have you considered this option?  You can add a comment below or, if you would rather not comment publicly, send me a message by clicking on "Contact us" in the right column.  I will summarize your response and make it anonymous and non-state-specific.