represent

Applying Natural Language Processing to extract interesting features from legislation. Data from OpenStates.

Features will be used in the Swipe for Rights app, which will:

• Allow users to express support/opposition to legislation
• Help users understand the content of legislation
• Provide actionable ways that users can respond to legislation

Components

• Topic modeling with bill text
• Predictive modeling for bill outcomes

Requirements

• An OpenStates API key from https://openstates.org/api/register/, saved as environment variable OPENSTATES_API_KEY
• pdftools to extract bill text

Setup

Create a conda environment and install required packages:

$ conda env create -f environment.yml

Activate the environment:

$ conda activate represent

This should be sufficient to run the scripts in py/ and notebooks in notebooks/.

Deactivate the conda environment:

$ conda deactivate

Remove the conda environment:

$ conda env remove --name represent