About Us

The mission of the Open Government Institute of California is to combine the tools of new and traditional media to directly impact the transparency, accountability, performance, and effectiveness of the California state government.

About CaliforniaVotes.org

Each two year session of the California state legislature results in the introduction of thousands of pieces of legislation. While there are outstanding arguments to be made about whether such a volume of legislation created by a full-time legislature offers a net benefit to the citizens of California, the job of California Votes is to accurately, concisely, and objectively track and summarize each piece of legislation as it makes its way through the legislative process.

Tailored to the needs of researchers, journalists, editors, bloggers, academics, legislators, political staffs, activists, and concerned citizens, this website is designed as an important tool that advances the benefits of open government and transparency.

Unlike other bill tracking utilities and the legislature’s own websites, California Votes, offers plain language descriptions of each piece of legislation, tracks legislator votes, and can be used as a powerful research tools via a robust built-in search engine.

Specifically, California Votes features:

• Concise, plain-language, objective and accurate descriptions of every bill, amendment, roll call vote and voice vote.
• Ability to track all the votes of a particular legislator, or search by bill number, category or keyword.
• Ability to view all the bills and amendments introduced by a particular legislator.
• Ability to post a public comment, view others' comments, and participate in citizen surveys on each bill.
• Automatically e-mail legislators or others about a bill.
• Ability to follow action in any one or more of 50 different categories of legislation (such as Education or Land Use or Taxes).
• Ability to sign up for e-mail notifications of action on any bill or subject area of interest, including new bill introductions.

California Votes is a free public service of the Open Government Institute of California, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c3. 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 the democratic process, and hold their elected representatives accountable.