Courtesy Photo
Countable is a smartphone app that tracks Congress activity and streamlines the process of contacting national representatives.
The state of American politics got you down? Feeling like you’re always finding out about something Congress has done always too late?
As it turns out, there’s Countable, a smartphone app that streamlines the democratic process. All you have to do is download it, and you can start sending your thoughts on bills and policies to your representatives within minutes.
The app serves a variety of purposes. Essentially, it keeps a news feed of bills going through the House and Senate and news articles about Congress and specific issues you choose to keep track of, a comment section for debate on the bills by users, and it makes it really easy to contact your Congressperson — even offering the option of sending them a video through the app.
Using your Facebook information for your name and location, the app automatically finds out who your national representatives are in your district upon logging in for the first time.
If you allow notifications, the app will alert you whenever your representatives make a vote or take action, as well as notify you when a bill is coming up to a vote. From there, you can follow the link to the bill’s page, where there’s a brief summary explanation of what the bill entails, “yea” and “nay” buttons for voicing your opinion to your representatives, and a comment section of other users who voted and their comments on the bill. If you agree with a sentiment expressed in a community vote in the app, you can “endorse” the user’s vote, and the total number of endorsements are tallied — much like Facebook comment likes or Twitter likes.
Screenshot by Nick Brothers
Countable does a good job summarizing bills that are coming up to a vote. The app keeps a history of representative’s voting records and helps make contacting representatives easier.
What’s better, you’re also given common arguments for either yea or nay, a progress tracker and full text of the bill, all right within the app.
Countable also keeps track of representatives’ voting records and arranges them like a Facebook profile page of recent activity and it emails you weekly activity reports if you want them. From there, you can go into each bill and see how congress voted. Their phone number, and links to their social media pages are available on their pages, too.
By the way, the most effective means of contacting your representative is by calling them on the phone.
The app is also a reliable news source. There’s a constant news feed of articles made from an in-house editorial staff that are, as far as I’ve seen, very balanced and simple to understand. Occasionally they offer a few helpful info-graphic videos full of solid information along with kitschy gifs and images of pandering “things millennials like” — i.e. cats, hip movie clips, Béyonce, etc.
The app itself is pretty easy to navigate. Using a image-block sort of interface, you can scroll through the feeds under each section: home feed, specific issues you picked to follow, your Countable profile page, notifications and further options. It’s impressive how easy it is to form an opinion from the summary and community posts, select yea or nay, and then be notified the app has notified your representative for you. From there you can write an email or record a video message to be sent to capitol hill.
The startup won’t sell data about how its users vote on particular issues to fundraisers or anyone else for political purposes, according to a Paste interview with Bart Myers, the app’s co-founder.
Countable is available to download for free on the iTunes App Store and Google Play.
