A new website sponsored by the Montana Policy Institute is aggregating the tweets made by Montana’s elected officials and candidates for public office.
The website, Montana Tweets, officially launched today. It provides a nonpartisan, searchable and sortable index of the officials who are already on Twitter. MPI President Carl Graham said the site currently lists elected officials and candidates, though the losing candidates will be removed after the election.
While the site publishes the complete list of elected officials and candidates — obtained from the Montana Secretary of State — currently only 15 of those people are listed as Twitter users.
“It’s hard” to find the accounts, Graham said, because they are often not well labeled or advertised. Plus, MPI attempts to verify that each Twitter account listed belong to the real person.
“It’s probably incomplete,” he said of the site’s listings.
Graham hopes that once work of the site spreads, more officials and candidates will contact MPI to get their accounts listed on the site.
“It’s an avenue for people to hear what their elected officials and candidates want to tell them,” Graham said. In addition to being a one-stop shop for all things political and Twitter in Montana, Graham said he hopes it will foster communication between legislators in Helena.
“I really see this coming of age during the legislative session. I would love to look out on the legislature floor and see this open on the legislators’ screens,” he said.
The Montana Policy Institute is a nonprofit organization based in Bozeman. More information about it can be found on the organization’s website.