Like it or not, another U.S. election season is upon us. Among other things, that means that people will be spending more time visiting the websites of U.S. legislators to study up on their views and voting records. What they’re going to find is not pretty. Congress seems to have found at least one issue that crosses party lines: truly horrible websites. If you’re looking for real information, the official websites for members of the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation, are uniformly useless.
According to the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF), which has been grading congressional sites since 2001, the overall quality of congressional sites has improved between 2009 and 2011. If that’s the case, I shudder to think of what shape the congressional sites were in back in 2009.
But the second key finding from the CMF rings true: “A significant number of Member websites lack basic educational and transparency features and content valuable to their constituents.” In visiting dozens of sites for members of the House and Senate, I found little that could be described as useful or valuable.
Interstitials, Really?
Let’s start with an issue that was literally in my face most of the time I was researching this. Who loves the interstitial ads and notices that pop up when you visit a website? That’s right, no one. Yet the sites for too many representatives and senators throw up an interstitial ad to sign up for their newsletter or take some poll the minute you click on their Web page.
In some cases, these
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