Statistics matter

For those keeping track, a few new additions to GovCheck.net were rolled out last night.

• Statistics from the previous election for a given constituency were added. What this means is that on a given constituency's page (see http://govcheck.net/repregion/ajmer-rajasthan/ for example) you can now see how many candidates stood for elections, how many people were eligible to vote, how many actually voted and what the winning margin was. See the screenshot for example.

• The other addition is minor, but given the available data, has the potential to be significant. On a given state's page, you can now, in addition to the voting statistics, see the sex ratio of said state too (see http://govcheck.net/state/rajasthan/ for example). The reason I say this has the potential to be more than just this is because all census data for a given state is now being collected. The next step is to display that data in a useful way now.
• Finally, in addition to the Web, News and Video searches, there is now a Twitter search tab (see http://govcheck.net/state/rajasthan/ for example) on all of the State, Party, Constituency and Representative pages. This should help you in getting a more real time understanding of what is being said about the current object.

Additionally the pretty url's trend has been extended. Now all states, constituencies and parties use better urls (see http://govcheck.net/state/22/ vs. http://govcheck.net/state/rajasthan/). As before, older urls should not break - if you have bookmarks, you will be redirected to the new url automatically.

If you have any comments about this change, do let us know.

Getting a broader view

A new feature just added to GovCheck.net let's you get a broader view of the MP, State, Party or Constituency you are currently viewing. On supported MP's pages, you will now see a Google Map of said MP's constituency (see http://govcheck.net/mp/vajpayee-atal-bihari/ for example) . Similarly, on a given constituency page, you will now see said constituencies location (see http://govcheck.net/repregion/449/ for example). Additionally on all the MP, State, Party and Constituency pages, you will now see a box towards the bottom that displays search results (courtesy of Google) from news, web and video sources. We believe that these changes give users a much broader overview of what is happening with a given MP, State, Party of Constituency.

A couple other (not-so-visible) changes have also been rolled out, such as prettier url's for MP pages (see http://govcheck.net/mp/vajpayee-atal-bihari/ vs. http://govcheck.net/mp/417/). An error with the petition creation process has also been fixed.

As always, if you feel like providing any feedback regarding issues you would like fixed or just something you would like to see done differently, you can submit a report or send us an email.