ReadtheBill.org is an organization advocating that “bills should be posted online for 72 hours for anyone to read before Congress debates them”. I think this is a great idea, and I’ve often brought this up to friends. People who are interested in the legislative process typically ask about the role of the Library of Congress’ Thomas system for tracking legislation. Thomas would be a great vehicle for posting legislation online for people to review. The problem is that bills are not currently required to be posted on Thomas for 72 hours before they can be debated.

Others suggest that this requirement should apply to state legislation as well. I think that is a great idea, and I’ve been thinking about and exploring State Legislative Websites a bit recently.

At the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) annual meeting last week, I attended various sessions about blogging and legislative websites. I decided to review some of the websites and present my thoughts on where we are.

It seems as if the biggest hurdle that State Legislative Websites face is that of getting people to use them. When Kim ran for State Representative, I was struck by the number of people who didn’t know who their State Reps where. People told me that 85% of the people in the United States don’t know. If that is the case, one wonders how many people would ever look at State Legislative Websites.

During the sessions at NCSL, legislators and their staff expressed the belief that the community of bloggers is actually pretty small, and they are the same people that you always see on election night or at any political event. They wondered how to get more people involved.

A good starting point would be to improve the State Legislative Websites. Many have basic search mechanisms to help people find bills, but often those mechanisms are based on the assumption that the searcher already knows about the bill, its bill number, and how it is working its way through the legislative process. Numerous sites used abbreviations that would flummox people not closely following the legislative process, and modern tools like RSS feeds and the ability to subscribe to a bill’s status via email was notably lacking.

More importantly, what is lacking is opportunities for legislators to explain why they voted a certain way on a certain bill. Instead, the only time voters ever seem to hear about how a legislator voted is during an election when an opponent is criticizing the vote, or asserting that a legislator “flip-flopped” on a bill, sometimes voting for it and sometimes voting against it.

It would be a great benefit if legislators could post, in a bloglike fashion, why they voted against a bill in committee or voted against cloture while at the same time voting for the bill in other forms. People could learn what their legislator is thinking during the deliberation process and not after the fact when the legislator is being attacked.

Of even greater benefit would be the ability for voters to add their own comments about various bills. Right now, they can do it, if they find out when a hearing is, are willing to drive to the State Capital, or some other site to testify, and the idea of testifying isn’t too overwhelming. If commenting on a bill were as easy as commenting on a blog, we could see a great improvement in citizen involvement.

That said, there are issues that this raises. How do you keep commentary on a website as civil as testimony in a legislative hearing? One of the first things is to make sure that people’s identity is known and verified. As one speaker at NCSL commented, a legislator would never allow a person to testify at a town meeting with a brown bag over their head. Anonymous and pseudonymous comments generally aren’t accepted at a hearing and probably shouldn’t be accepted on legislative websites.

Then, there is the whole issue of moderation. At what point do you take down a comment? There are probably some clear rules, such as the use of profanity as defined by George Carlin’s seven words. However, there are plenty of gray areas. How do you determine when a character attack has stepped over the line? How does this relate to freedom of speech issues?

What many legislators have done is set up their own blogs, or blogs for a caucus they are a member of. This gets around some of the free speech issues. Individuals and groups of people have much more control over what can be said on their property, whether it be in a home or some virtual property like a blog. To the extent that a site is run by a legislature, it is much more like public property and people visiting the site have many more rights.

By improving the ability to search legislative websites, to subscribe to the results of those searches and to join in a conversation about the bills being discussed in the State House, state legislators have an opportunity to bring more people into the legislative process. However, they probably won’t do it without a little prodding.

How good is your state legislative website? What opportunities do you have to discuss bills with your state legislators? Together, with people from a couple different mailing lists, I’ve gathered some initial commentary on State Legislative Websites which can be found on the State Legislative Websites page on the Blogs United Wiki. Check out what it says about your state. If you have comments about the information, join Blogs United and update the information or pass information on to me.

Let’s work together to leverage technology and find new ways to promote involvement in state legislatures.

(Cross posted at BlogsUnited)