Inside PBS Blog

Government is getting more transparent - one widget at a time. The folks over at MAPLight.org have released a new widget that lets citizens track contributions to congressional candidates on their blogs or social networking sites.

The Berkeley, Calif.-based nonpartisan site already tracks the connection between money and politics by mashing up a database of campaign contributions with records of how legislators vote on particular bills. The new widgets make it much easier for bloggers and web site operators to disseminate the news.

The MAPLight widgets are essentially portable chunks of code that let content be displayed on any web page, with no programming required. Bloggers, citizens groups, and even lowly mainstream media reporters are now able to capture campaign finance data and then port the info to their site, highlighting the races most important to them. Users can even change the color palette of the widget. No doubt the widgets are already bitterly separating into red and blue.

MAPLight's congressional database combines all campaign contributions to U.S. legislators with legislators' votes on every bill, using official records from the Library of Congress and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org). The resulting mashup of bills, voting records, and campaign contributions powers the site's search engine that lets people see the links between dollars spent and votes cast.

Sadly, MAPLight doesn't so much offer surprises. For example, remember last May when the Senate passed an amendment to prevent U.S. consumers from buying prescription drugs from abroad? A visit to MAPLight quickly reveals that the pharmaceutical industry, which strongly supported the amendment, gave an average of $70,181 to each Senator voting Yes - far more than the $25,914 average the industry gave to each Senator voting No.

Gosh, you'd almost think they paid for the votes.

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