UC Berkeley Launches New Legislative Roll-Call Voting Website

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Institute of European Studies are pleased to announce the establishment of a new web site - voteworld.berkeley.edu - created in order to assist researchers access voting records from legislatures and international organizations. Called VoteWorld, the aim of this central website is to archive, maintain, and distribute datasets of roll-call voting from legislative bodies throughout the international community.

VoteWorld aims to provide both archival services and web-based access services for voting in legislatures and international organizations. VoteWorld will first bring online the United States Congress, the United Nations General Assembly, and the European Parliament. Next up will be national legislatures from around the world and American state legislatures. With VoteWorld, individuals will be able to display the votes on an issue, such as the impeachment of President Clinton, on a map of electoral districts or states. An alternative view will display votes in terms of the ideological orientation of nations or legislators. The entire database will be easily searchable for content. VoteWorld seeks to make the political process more transparent and accessible to the general public.

The new site includes the following resources:

• Roll call data for the US Congress.
• A bibliography of published literature that used this kind of data as part of its analysis.
• The listing of international advisory board members associated with this project.

As the website develops it plans to provide access to shared and downloadable data from other international legislative bodies.

For more information, contact Heddy Riss: hriss@uclink.berkeley.edu.