Press Release

Contact: John Barnes
jbarnes@wavotes.org
206-937-9691

OLYMPIA – WashingtonVotes.org will provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 2012 Regular Session of the Washington State Legislature that convenes next Monday, January 9th. This free website allows interested citizens, media, activists, government affairs professionals and policymakers to track the issues they care about.

In addition to crafting a supplemental budget to address the $1.5 billion deficit, legislators will also be considering tax increases, ways the state can help spur job creation and economic recovery, and wrestling with today’s state Supreme Court decision saying Washington is not fully funding basic education. Moreover, all bills from the 2011 regular and special sessions will be considered “alive” in the legislative process and can be considered by legislators. WashingtonVotes.org is the best tool for following these and all of the issues in Olympia. The site features:

• Concise, plain-English, objective descriptions of every bill, amendment and vote of the Washington Legislature
• Customizable daily email updates on legislative action
• The ability to search for legislation by issue, keyword, and bill number
• A searchable database of legislation and votes dating back to 2001
• A real-time Missed Votes Report that catalogs the number of votes each legislator misses

Users can also follow WashingtonVotes.org and get updates on legislation through Facebook and Twitter (@wavotes).

WashingtonVotes.org is a portal for policymakers, state agencies, members of local governments, schools and citizen groups that use the site to monitor bills during the fast-moving sessions. University and college faculty and students go to the website to teach and learn about the legislative process. Reporters covering state government regularly rely on WashingtonVotes.org for quick access to voting record information. Government affairs professionals use the site to stay updated on their issues.

In addition, during this special legislative session and all sessions, WashingtonVotes.org provides a weekly Roll Call service to more than fifty media outlets around the state.  Through this service, updates are sent out on the top five bills each week that legislators voted on plus voting records tailored to each media outlets’ region. This covers nearly every legislative district in the state, providing valuable information to citizens on their legislators’ actions.

WashingtonVotes.org is a free public service of Washington Policy Center, a non-partisan, non-profit research and educational organization. Its purpose is to inform citizens, community leaders, business people, media and public officials about legislation that affects their families, schools, jobs and communities. The site empowers citizens to take a more active part in representative government, and hold their elected representatives accountable.