Hoping to fulfill your civic duty as a participating citizen of a democracy? There’s an app for that! Well, there might be.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, reached out to Facebook users by launching Citizen Cosponsor Project on his official House Majority Leader website.
“Stay connected with Congress on Facebook,” reads the caption at the top of the page. “It’s your government, so make your voice heard and stay up-to-date on the progress of legislation you care about.”
According to the copywriter for Cantor’s website, Citizen Cosponsor is “a dynamic communications platform that creates a more open, visible and participatory legislative process” by “enabl[ing] you to follow legislation that you’re interested in. You will then receive first-hand information and updates on the status of the bill as it moves through the legislative process.”
Mashable.com reported that Matt Lira, Cantor’s director of new media, built the platform (funded by Cantor’s office) on Facebook’s Open Graph, to integrate into the feeds and timelines of interested users.
Despite the name, Citizen Cosponsor does not actually let ordinary citizens propose bills before Congress, or comment on pending legislation. It basically lets Facebook users “like” proposed bills—only instead of clicking “like,” you “become a citizen cosponsor” and receive the previously mentioned status updates.
Thus far there are six pieces of legislation available for cosponsorship, five proposed by Republicans (including the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion” act and a proposed tax cut for small businesses), and one bill from a Democrat.
Is it possible that Citizen Cosponsor might one day allow citizens to actually suggest new bills, or amendments to existing ones? Lira did not mention plans for any specific changes to the current Citizen Cosponsor setup, though he implied that changes of some sort were bound to happen. “We have a startup mentality to it,” he said. “When Twitter first started, it was just going to be for cell phones, now it is what it is today. It’s evolutionary, so you want to see how users use it and if the engagement justifies it, we’ll expand it out.”
Photo by Gage Skidmore
