In June, Margaret shared that we had added district maps to member profile pages on Congress.gov. Each map on a member profile can be expanded to show a larger size version of the map. With today’s update to Congress.gov, we build upon the district maps by adding a new search box to help you find your member. One piece of feedback we have received over the years is to include a feature to help constituents figure out who represents them in Congress. Now you can search by putting an address into the box that is labeled “Find your member by address.”
We want to make sure that people who want to find their member will have the opportunity in a variety of places on the website, starting with the “Contact Your Member” section on the homepage (on the right side towards the top).
On the Members of the U.S. Congress page, the “Find your member by address” is also included under How to Contact Your Member.
The third location where you will find this new search feature is on Contact Us, also under How to Contact Your Member of Congress.
In any of these locations, once you put your cursor in the search box, you will also have an option to select “Use current location.” Feel free to either select that or type in the address that you would like to look up.
After putting in your address (say a Library of Congress building), then you get the person who represents that district and the relevant senators, if applicable. If you do not put in a complete address you might get more than one representative back.
From there you can zoom in and out on the map or click to go to a member profile page for more information about that member and to set up alerts.
Enhancements for July 2020
The complete list of enhancements for this second release of July release include:
Enhancement – Members – Address Search
- Find your senators and representative by entering your address or zip code in the search box under Contact Your Member on the homepage or on the Members page.
Enhancement – Legislation – Search Results Sort Options
- Legislation search results can be sorted by number of cosponsors.
- Select Sort by: Cosponsor count – Most to Least to see which bills in your search set have the most cosponsors.
- Select Sort by: Cosponsor count – Least to Most to see which bills in your search set have the fewest cosponsors.
Enhancement – Nominations – Search Form
- Nominations search form displays historical committee names in the selection list when previous Congresses are selected.
The first release of July was highlighted in the Midway Through 2020 post.
How are you using Congress.gov? Are there enhancements you would like to see us add? Leave a comment below or share your feedback.