Today, every state has a Website that enlivens access to the political process by both the public and lawmakers. Depending on the state, users can move through a site to check calendars, read session summaries, track legislation, get reports, find committee membership rosters, retrieve daily schedules, and more. Oklahoma features a glossary of legislative terms and an orientation to the Capitol complex. Virginia includes searchable databases for the state's administrative code, the Supreme Court rules and a list of legislative studies. While legislative sites can streamline communications and services, they're fundamentally about increasing civic participation in the legislative process.
Citizens can get to information about a pending statute as readily as lawmakers and lobbyists can.
And they can respond immediately, usually via email. Conversely, lawmakers can email constituents from the floor of a session. States with part-time legislatures may find a site's efficiency factor especially alluring. Lawmakers can get to information quickly and they have the potential to work more thoroughly. It's true that technology won't replace the in-person handshakes that remain stock in trade for political work, but legistlative sites can extend the process of democracy from lawmakers to lobbyists to voters to students doing research.