isabella232 / congress-bot

Bot to track legislation and other activity by members of Congress from a specific state

Congress Leg (lej) Bot

@calif_leg_bot

Contributors: Sean McMinn, Francesca Paris, Sara Wise, Maite Fernandez and Sean Mussenden

Developed at NPR Serendipity Days and Hacks/Hackers DC.

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This is a Twitter bot to track activity by members of Congress from a specific state.

The bot is currently prototyped on California (1): because Sean is from that golden state, and (2): because if this works California's 55-member delegation, it should be fine with, say, West Virginia's five-person delegation.

The Python scripts are set up to regularly ping ProPublica's Congress API. They check for new data, then compose tweets based on the the information returned.

This uses the Tweepy Python library to post tweets.

Current functionality:

• Tweet votes by senators and House members
• Tweet statements by senators and House members
• Tweet bills introduced by senators and House members
• Tweet when a bill passes that was introduced by a senator or House member from a specific state

Future (aspirational) functionality:

• Tweet cosponsorships by senators and House members
• Tweet TV/radio appearances by senators and House members
• Tweet amendments offered by senators and House members

Note: Twitter has revoked write access from our application, presumably because they hate freedom, democracy and apple pie. Updates to come ...