Solution

Like our work with MAPLight.org, DMI's score card works by importing legislation and legislator information via the GovTrack API, which regularly scrapes data from Thomas.loc.gov. We made it easy for DMI staff to add new bills to the scorecard by creating a legislation CCK field module -- the administrator simply enters in the bill number, chooses the vote from a drop-down list, selects the middle class position, and Drupal handles the rest.

But collecting the data is only half the battle; we implemented Randi Hazan's excellent design to present the scorecard data in a myriad of useful ways. Users can view how Congress performed on an individual bill, investigate the performance of the individual legislators in their state, and view the current scores and grade history of any individual legislator -- all presented clearly with dynamic infographics built upon the GD Graphics Library.

TheMiddleClass.org has a widget-creation tool that allow any blogger or web site operator to display scorecard data on their own site. With our easy-to-use jQuery-enhanced widget builder, you can pick any group of legislators or bills whose middle class significance you want to highlight to your site visitors.