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"Have you ever been reading about a proposed bill, such as SOPA or CISPA, thinking \"I really need to call my representative about this?\"\nIf so, you've probably noticed that finding contact information on lawmakers' websites, often poorly constructed, can be a hassle. Two new online tools want to streamline that process and instantly connect you to your elected officials.\nRaise Your Voice\nRaise Your Voice is a Colorado-based startup that allows media and advocacy organizations to easily embed a widget into news articles and blog posts. The widget then lets readers plug in their ZIP Code to instantly get in touch with their representatives at the local, state or federal levels. It can be customized with a particular call to action \u2014 useful for organizations with a particular objective, such as non-profits.\n\nDan Busse, co-founder of Raise Your Voice, said the motivation behind the widget is to foster communication between lawmakers and the general public.\n\"This wasn't an idea to make money,\" Busse told Mashable. \"Instead, it's to cut out the middlemen \u2014 the pundits and interest groups \u2014 and directly connect legislators and people.\" \nRaise Your Voice is already being used by several major media outlets and advocacy groups, including Boston.com, the Des Moines Register and PickensPlan.com. More than 3,000 people have contacted their legislators through the tool.\nBusse's goal? \"We want to be on the order of millions \u2014 we want to become ubiquitous in online news,\" he said. \"We want people to be able to connect with their legislators directly from any news site in quick one or two step interactions.\"\nGovHub\nGovHub is an online portal for finding contact information for all of your elected officials based on your address. The service also lets you track legislation that's particularly important to you, have Q&amp;As with local politicians and interact with other voters about key issues.\n\nThe site was co-founded by Nick Gaines, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. \n\"I was in a political science class in the middle of freshman year,\" Gaines told Mashable. \"The professor asked us to name our state senator. I always thought of myself as a politically engaged person, but when the professor asked that and nobody \u2014 including me \u2014 knew the answer, it made me realize there's parts of the system that people don't understand.\" \nGaines' mission is to take what he sees as today's mostly one-way political communication (from lawmakers to constituents) and replace it with a \"two-way, almost 3D communication.\" In two months, GovHub has collected about 6,000 users. Gaines thinks the site's success came because it's filling a void in the online political space.\n\"Without any Search Engine Optimization, we're getting all those hits because we're the only people that easily give voters contact info,\" said Gaines. \"On most government websites, it's impossible to get in touch with your legislator. We've made that process 15 seconds long.\"\nWhat's next for GovHub? Gaines wants the site to fill the destiny of its name, literally becoming a centralized hub for tracking government behavior on the Internet. \n\"We want to become the nexus for this emerging space on the web,\" said Gaines. \"The core of what GovHub is going to be is using technology to guide people through politics and teach them how to interact in the most effective way.\"\nContacting Your Representatives\nWould you use Raise Your Voice or GovHub to get in touch with your representatives? Let us know in the comments below.\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, Henrick5000"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/05/14/raise-your-voice-govhub/>