HawaiiVotes

New Tool For Hawaii's Voters (News Rel.)

Tom@GRIH — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:43:00 GMT

NEWS RELEASE

Hawaii Voters Get New Transparency Tool
Powerful, free website empowers citizens to track activity of state legislature and individual lawmakers

March 24, 2009 --- Citizens now have a powerful, online tool to track the actions of Hawaii’s state legislature and individual legislators. HawaiiVotes.org is a free website that provides concise, non-partisan, plain-English descriptions of every bill, amendment and vote in the Hawaii House and Senate. These are all sortable by legislator, issue category, keyword and more, allowing a citizen to quickly create a custom “voting record guide” for any legislator on any issue.

How did a state representative or senator vote on an issue or bill that you care about? What bills and amendments did each legislator sponsor? What legislation actually became law this year – and what did not? What would all these bills actually do (vs. what their sponsors intend)? Which legislators have missed the most votes, and how many did yours miss? The answers to all those questions and more are at citizens’ fingertips 24 hours a day on HawaiiVotes.org.

HawaiiVotes.org is a free public service from the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii (GRIH), a nonpartisan, nonprofit research and educational institution. The purpose of the new site is to inform citizens, media and public officials about legislation that affects their families, schools, jobs and communities.

Grassroot Institute President Jamie Story says it's a great tool for anyone who is either frustrated with the performance of elected officials or is just plain curious about the process. “The new website empowers citizens to actually participate in the democratic process,” she said. “HawaiiVotes.org will shed great light on our state legislature and government.”

The site also provides other features, including a comments section/forum where citizens can share their views about particular bills or other state public policy issues. A blog aggregator displays the most recent post of the state’s leading political blogs both left and right, and “LegislatorPedia” and “JudgePedia” shed additional sunlight on the Aloha state’s elected officials and judiciary.

“State government is involved in so many areas of our lives and economy; HawaiiVotes.org has never been needed more,” said GRIH Communications Director Tom McAuliffe. “It’s free, easy to use, fast and informative. Think of it as a giant spyglass on the Hawaii State Legislature!”

For more information please visit www.grassrootinstitute.org

-GRIH-

Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

1314 S. King St.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Office: (808) 591-9193

eMail: info@grassrootinstitute.org

www.grassrootinstitute.org

Grassroot TV

www.youtube.com/user/GrassrootHawaii

The mission of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is to promote individual liberty, free market economic principles and limited, more accountable government.

HIvotes goes LIVE!

Tom@GRIH — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:31:00 GMT

Aloha,

As Jackie Gleason use to say... "And awaaaaaay we go!" HawaiiVotes is going live!

Since the 60-day session of the 25th Legislature started Jan. 16th TeamGrassroot has been hard at work and we are re-describing the bills and categorizing them. We are past the half way mark to Sine Die (last day) on May 7th. Please let us know what you think about the site and how we can make it even better. Also let it fly, within reason, in the forums... How shall we get out of the present fiscal problem? Should we raise taxes? Cut state government hours and/or jobs? Where are you on issues like Civil Unions, the Public/Ceded lands or the Union card law? This is YOUR forum we are but facilitators of information. Let the sun shine in...

Their Votes... YOUR views!

TeamGrassroot

Please take the Poll!

Tom@GRIH — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:13:00 GMT

Under the General Gov. section

Please take the poll about what issue you feel

will be the #1 issue this session.

ALSO: please check out this podcast with the head of the Public Access Room at the Capitol.

http://www.grassrootinstitute.org/podcasts/pod29_Marinelli.mp3

And away we go!

Aloha,

Tom @ HiVotes

Aloha from GRIH and HIvotes!

Tom@GRIH — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:58:00 GMT

Aloha Fellow Hawaiian, and welcome to the HawaiiVotes BLOG! Team Grassroot and I will be keeping you up to date on the inner workings of the Hawaii State Capitol and the measures they will introduce the next legislative session which starts Jan. 22, 2009. It's both an exciting and a challenging time, because we are finally starting to see some movement toward governmental transparency and challenging because there is so much we can and should do to move our state forward.

Welcome to HawaiiVotes.org!

Tom@GRIH — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:57:00 GMT

Welcome to HawaiiVotes.org! This web site provides concise, non-partisan, plain-English descriptions of every bill and vote in the Hawaii House and Senate. You can search these by legislator, category, keyword and more. Citizens can also post comments about bills and discuss other state policy issues on the Forums.

So what do you think?