Offer for a FREE state

We need reviews!

Here’s the deal, download CapitolBuddy on your iPhone or iPad today. Sign up, test it out, and review it. And then you get your state for free!

Download it in the App Store. 

Keep these cool new feature in mind too.

Pretty easy! This deal will go for the next 24 hours, so spread the word.

EDIT: Deal extended through the end of the week (Sunday, Oct. 27).

After you’ve submitted your review, just enter your username below and what state you’d like. I’ll give you the free state as soon as I see your submitted form and then you can click “Restore” in CapitolBuddy’s “change states” view to load it up.

Username(required)

Email

Which state?(required) Missouri Virginia Ohio Illinois

Comment

Submit

Δ

Advertisement

Virginia, Ohio, and Illinois! Learn about your lawmakers.

I’m excited to announce that my team has compiled the legislator data for Virginia, Ohio, and Illinois.

Here’s the info you can find on every legislator.

• Photo
• Name
• Party
• District
• Phone
• Email*
• Office ( either room number or address)
• Staff **
• Hometown
• Committees
• Short Biography

Other great features include:

• Viewing all committee members in listview***
• District Maps
• Vote Count
• Backed Up Notes
• Legislator Rating Tool
• Note Taking Tool

All of these are available to test out for free with Rhode Island’s information in the iOS App Store. Every other state’s info will cost you $24.99 / year. Me and my team are dedicated to keeping the legislator info up to date and improving it every day. When we update info, your app will download it automatically. So, go make some buddies in the your capitol today!

*Contact webpage in the case of Ohio.
**Illinois, Ohio, and Rhode Island are missing the staff member info — they don’t publish that info online, unfortunately.
*** Missouri has an icon for chair and vice-chair in the committee member view.

CapitolBuddy is LIVE in the App Store

Version 1.1 of the CapitolBuddy is in the App Store now. Go download it for free.

Review of the pricing

Rhode Island comes free with the app so you can see the layout, view the available info, and try out the Notes and Vote Count features.

Then, if you need the info for a state that isn’t Rhode Island, you pay $24.99 for a year’s subscription. Enjoy having up-to-date legislator contact info, bios, photos, and more right in your pocket — something services like GovWatch don’t even offer.

So far Missouri has been approved for sale in the App Store. Illinois, Virginia, Ohio, and the US Congress are on the way. If you’re looking for a specific state, leave a comment!

Enjoy.

Get the news on legislators

A new addition to the legislator profiles is the “Recent News” button. It’s pretty simple in that it takes you to a google news search of the Rep. or Sen. But I used it the other day to see that my own state representative was elected as the Chairwoman of the board for John Hope, a local non-profit day-care. Good to know what your legislators are up to, right?

Rate your legislators in CapitolBuddy

I’ve added a simple feature that should be useful for most folks at state capitols. Now you can add a rating to each legislator on the notes page. There’s a slider that let’s you change the rating on a 0 to 5 scale, with increments of one tenth. Then you save it like you would save your notes. Here’s what it looks like:

Your ratings are completely private, just like your notes. I have not put the rating into the text of your message when you click “Email”. I know some people guard their legislator rankings like their social security number.

My question for you is, would you like to be able to do even more with the rating? Because I’m considering a re-ordering or re-categorizing tool if you want to sort people by the rating you’ve given them — I think it’s something that would go in the Vote Count section of the app.

For example, you could add all your ratings of 4 and up to the YAY votes tab, and add all your 2’s and below to the NAY votes tab. Keep 3’s in the swing votes. Basically, I’m curious how people will want to use the ratings and the Vote Count feature together.

So, please let me know if you want to be able to do more with your legislator ratings. And look for CaptiolBuddy in the App Store in the next week.

Vote Count: The newest tool in the toolbelt

With version 1.1 of CapitolBuddy, soon to be submitted, there’s an exciting new tool included. It’s called Vote Count and if you’ve got your eye on any bill in the legislature, this is where you’ll track how each legislator will vote.

Start by choosing Vote Count from the main menu:

Then push the + button to add a bill, name it and choose the which house of the legislature. Select your new bill to see the vote count.

When you’re in the vote count for your bill, there are several options to get you started. Start by adding all the Democrats or Republicans to the YEA or NAY side. By default everyone starts as a swing vote.

Then choose any of the tabs to see which legislators are in there. It’s always ordered by district for you to easily find the person you’re looking for. To change which category any vote falls into, swipe them left or right as if you were swiping them to the next tab over (i.e. Swiping right from the YEA votes sends the legislator to the Swing votes. Swiping left from the YEA votes sends the legislator around to the NAY votes.) Click the (i) button on the right to go to their info and notes page.

 

Look for the app to arrive in 2-3 weeks so you can try it yourself!