In the absence of InnoVoter / StickyVote, you may be wondering, “how can I best manage my Government?”  I’m happy to report that this area is still a hotbed of startup activity.  Although several contemporary projects have shut down, some have morphed and new ones have started.

One of the new, Votizen.com, raised $1.5 million just over a year ago and has quite the who’s who of advisers and investors.  Interestingly they have chosen to focus on voter registration records; one of the big early decisions I made was just to prototype that piece and to leave full implementation for later.  Before too long we should see whether that will form a strong foundation for Votizen to build on or a crushing weight of software and data maintenance.

Next on the list is PopVox.com, co-founded by the guy behind govtrack.us, which is still a great source of Federal legislative data.  To communicate with Congress this is the best tool I’ve seen, they have great widgets and do a good job of grouping similar bills together.  The one other I recommend is OpenCongress.org, a non-profit with a strong community of users commenting on bills as well as any easy place to find general information on Congress.