ElectedNet! used to rely on Grace York’s data set at the University of Michigan; but that went away a little over a year ago. I’ve switched to taking the data directly from the House and Senate web sites¹. This means I lose email addresses, but there weren’t many addresses left in the last data set anyway.

In the last build I pulled from Grace’s file in 2008, out of 440 House members, only 26 entries included an email address. Out of 100 Senators, only five entires included an email address. I can’t blame them. Spam makes public addresses nearly worthless.

The Senate data now includes the Washington address and phone number for most members. It also includes when they are next up for re-election. House members are always up for re-election; the White House is up every four years. But Senators are up every six years, and to keep the Senate from having massive turnover every six years Senate seats are divided into three classes, and each class is up for election in a different year.

A bit of quick math lets me get the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of that year, and I display the actual election date for each seat.

This also lets me add a new feature: you can search on who is up for re-election in the next election, and, if it differs from the next election, the next Presidential election.