Senate Steps Into the 21st Century, Updates Franking Rules

Sarah has done some stellar work here on the site reporting on the Franking Rules, which govern how Congress persons can communicate with their constituents. The gist being that it is in part due to these laws that many in Congress remain mired in the 20th Century, unable to make use of new technologies like YouTube. Arguments over those rules also instigated some partisan debate between Democrats and Republicans, resulting in the Let Our Congress Tweet campaign.

Well, the Sunlight Foundation says that the Senate is getting ready to update those rules to something a little more appropriate to this century:

Last year, the Open House Project proposed the loosening of rules governing what lawmakers can post to their official web sites. Last week, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration approved new rules to allow lawmakers to post content from third party sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and so on.

The new rules, while not immediately available for public review, appear to be far different from the ones proposed earlier this year. Earlier, Rules and Administration proposed to “keep a list of “approved Web sites” that agreed to provide pages free of advertisements or partisan leanings.”

In contrast to this proposal Republicans on the Committee offered a plan to allow lawmakers to post at their discretion, and in accordance with long-standing standards, with review by the Committee if necessary. The approved plan mirrors the Republican plan.

I'm sure we'll have more on this once the exact changes to the rules are made public.