I also wanted to mention that I developed the (free) Open States iOS application for the Sunlight Foundation.  It covers the basic legislative information for the legislators, committees, bills, and events for each of the 50 state legislatures.  The data collection for Open States is largely automated instead of manually aggregated, so even though it isn’t as specialized for Texas, the updates are more frequent and will happen quicker than for TexLege.

Regardless, I’m as anxious as you are to see TexLege with data for the 83rd!

As always, thanks for your support!

Greg

It’s not always 100% complete, but it seems to work pretty well for my purposes.  I thought I’d make it public since a few of you have asked about TexLege exporting all events to the main calendar on the iPhone.  This seems to be a pretty good option, particularly for those folks without an iPhone or an iPad.

Depending on your calendar application, you should see an option to subscribe to a calendar via URL.  Here’s the one you need:

http://www.texlege.com/texlege.ics

Unfortunately, the forthcoming TexLege 2.5 update will drop support for some older iOS versions (anything before 4.0). If your iOS device hasn’t been upgraded to iOS 4.0 or greater (4.3 is out now), please consider doing so in order to continue using TexLege.

Upgrading your device with a newer operating system is as easy as plugging it in your computer and starting iTunes. However, if you have any questions or concerns about this upgrade process I’m happy to help. Moreover, if you have questions or concerns about TexLege dropping support for older operating system versions, please contact me, I’m happy to discuss it.

I absolutely apologize, however it has become increasingly difficult to maintain compatibility with the older OS versions while adding new features and improving the stability of the TexLege application. Frankly, iOS 4.2 added so many new features to iPads and iPhones that I don’t know of any reason why you wouldn’t want to upgrade.

Of all the users who have graciously opted-in and permitted  analytics data collection  in TexLege, twenty-three will be adversely affected by this decision.  To illustrate this, I’ve attached a table of TexLege users’ iOS versions for the past 30 days.

Some new additions and changes:

• Photos and contact information for all members of the 82nd legislature.
• More comprehensive staffer listing (not 100% accurate yet, please send corrections if you know of any).
• Now includes each legislator’s reelection date / term expiration.
• Simple data updates now arrive over the Internet, without necessitating an update of the entire application at the App Store.  This should greatly speed up my ability to deliver minor updates for legislators and/or committees.
• Initially, it only has Senate committees.  Once the Speaker announces House committee assignments, I’ll push another data update.
• Twitter feeds now open in the official Twitter application, if available on your device.  Otherwise, they open in the built-in web browser as before.
• I’m still tracking down a graphical bug in the Committee Meetings calendar.  At the very least, you should be able to access meeting information (if you’ve experienced problems in the past).  I will likely revisit and rewrite the calendar utility for the next TexLege update.

Update 2.2 should be available in the next week or so.  It fixes a potential crash related to GPS positioning and district maps on newer iOS version.

I calculate the partisanship scores using all the roll call votes taken in House since 1991, and since 1999 for the Senate. However, in order allow legislator score comparison from one session to another, I apply a statistical transformation on the data. In a sense, a legislator’s current voting record score is influenced by their scores in previous sessions. This is, in my professional opinion, much more desirable than the traditional full-on aggregation of roll call votes into one massive overly smoothed index. The way I analyze roll call votes ensures that scores calculated for prior sessions do not change with the addition of subsequent legislative sessions. I’ve always had a difficult time understanding why a change in a legislator’s partisanship in 2000 should have any impact on his partisanship back in 1973. (It shouldn’t!)

Caveats:

Don’t interpret these scores as a measure of ideology. That’s bad science. Many interest groups and politicos commonly make this mistake. Rather, these scores are a measure of partisanship within the voting record only. Partisanship in voting and in ideology are two very different things.

You shouldn’t compare scores between House members and Senators, the scales are not the same. I’m working on a technique that will put both chambers in the same scale, but I haven’t finished it yet. However, you can compare scores between members of the same chamber, or from one legislative session to another.

For more information:

The roll call partisanship analysis originates from my dissertation titled “The Power of the Texas Speaker: Maintaining Influence and Governing over a Divided House”, available from UMI/ProQuest or through your university’s library. I use Dr. Keith Pool’s W-NOMINATE software to generate scores for a single session. I then apply Dr. Gerald Wright’s modified Groseclose-Levitt-Snyder transformation to iteratively regress individual legislator scores from one session to the previous session.

But now I can guarantee I won’t be lost under there again, and you won’t be either. Among a litany of other features, TexLege has pre-installed maps of the complex, along with a full directory of legislators and their office information, so you won’t need internet service to find your way around.

Exclusive to TexLege – A Roll Call Vote Index measuring legislator partisanship! The Roll Call Index originates from my dissertation, and uses Poole and Rosenthal’s W-NOMINATE dimensional scaling analysis method. In this context, it is not a measure of ideology, nor should it be taken as such. It is a measure of marginalization between legislators in their record voting behavior.