RepSheet lets you...
To find your representatives, simply type your address into the search box on the home page and hit "Go." RepSheet does the rest, showing you who represents you, what their districts look like and their latest media appearances. We call this page of information a "RepSheet."
Once you've created a RepSheet for your address, you can follow news updates by RSS or sign up for free, once-a-day e-mail alerts. In this way, RepSheet lets you passively track what your elected officials are up to.
RepSheet was created by Milan Andric and Brad Flora, a web developer and a journalist, both based in Chicago. They currently work together on The Windy Citizen, a Chicago news hub where readers create the front page by rating and sharing local news, blogs, photos and weirdness on the web.
You can follow Milan on twitter at http://twitter.com/mandric
You can follow Brad on twitter at http://twitter.com/bflora
You can join the conversation on The Windy Citizen at http://www.windycitizen.com
RepSheet was created using Django, a free, open source Python Web framework. Specifically GeoDjango was fundamental in this project. The source code is available on google code.
Boundary data came from the City of Chicago. Information on representatives was drawn from Project Votesmart. News is pulled from Google News.
RepSheet is an adaptation of NYTimes.com's wonderful Represent project, which covers New York City and uses news and data from the New York Times. Represent's developers detailed their process here, and here, which was immensely helpful.
Milan and Brad can be reached at feedback@repsheet.com
For its initial release, RepSheet is available in Chicago and has data on ward aldermen, state representatives and senators, and United States representatives. If there's another type of Chicago official or different info you'd like to see added, e-mail us.
Our goal is to make local politics crazy accessible. We've kept version one very basic so YOU can tell us what you want it to do. If you've got ideas, e-mail us.
If you'd like to see RepSheet come to your city, you can help make that happen by tracking down the boundary data for your local political zones. Often it's publicly available on city web sites, but not always. If you've got GIS data, e-mail us.
If you want to know when we release something for your location, e-mail us or follow us on twitter.
We have a twitter account where you can follow improvements and updates.
RepSheet will not sell or expose your address or e-mail information to any third-parties.