Visible Vote is a great app to inform you on issues Congress is debating. With Visible Vote, you have the power to track bills your legislators are working on and vote on pending legislation. When you first open the app, you are asked to set up a profile. The profile set up requires you to provide an e-mail address, password, zip code, and state. You will need to confirm your e-mail address before set up is complete. I admit the set up is a little tedious but it’s worth taking the five minutes. After validating your information, Visible Vote finds your current legislators for you.
On the main screen you are provided with four menu tabs on the bottom: Vote Summary, Vote Now, Write Legislator, and Settings. The “Vote Summary” screen lists the President followed by your current legislators. For instance if you tap on the President, you’re presented with additional information such as: name, title, Twitter account, and comments from Visible Vote & Facebook users. If you tap on “Call legislator” a pop-up will appear and Visible Vote will dial your legislator right from the app. You can also leave your Real-Time Approval (RTA) rating which is calculated by Visible Vote users giving the elected official a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down”. You will also notice a meter measuring the percentage of issues you either Agree or Disagree on.
The next screen, “Vote Now” is where you can set up filters for pending legislation by tapping on the tiny magnifying glass in the left corner of the screen. There are three filter options: sort by, bill progress, or by category. In the “Vote Now” screen, you can also add custom issues that you would like to follow. You are also presented with two categories: “Unanswered Issues” which are bills that you have yet to vote on and “Answered Issues.” To vote, just tap on a bill and you will be presented with the following details: title of the bill, category, Visible Vote & Facebook user comments, state vote tallies, a summary, and links to view the bill in it’s entirety. After viewing the details, tap “Vote!” located on the very bottom. Next you are presented with three choices: Yes, No, & Don’t Care. A second screen will pop-up asking you to rate the issue choosing from one to four stars. When you complete voting on an issue, a pop-up will confirm that your vote was recorded and sent to your legislators.
The developer’s website states, Visible Vote sends an overview fax every week to your legislators on how you and others in his/her district are voting.
The “Write Legislator” section allows you to send a message directly to your elected officials-minus the President. You can send one message to all of them or you can select a particular legislator. There is a subject and message field for you to fill out. The last menu tab, “Settings” is divided into three sections, general, profile, and lens. The general and profile sections contain the information you filled out when setting up the application. The lens section allows you to view the subscriptions (legislators) you are following. Similar to Twitter, you can follow or unfollow any particular legislator. You can also subscribe to follow the Democratic or Republican National Party.
This is a great app to keep you informed on the current issues and it gives you a chance to interact with your elected officials. I think the idea is a good one, but I do wish the set up was less time consuming. You can also set up the app to sync your comments to the Visible Vote application on Facebook. The latest version 1.6 (2/6/10) has fixed previous bugs and runs without any problems for me now.
Visible Vote is available for FREE in the App Store
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