Help Washington Watch track congressional earmarks

A good friend of OpenRegs.com is Washington Watch, a site that lets you find, rate, describe, and discuss legislation being considered by Congress. They have now begun a project to crowdsource earmark tracking and they need your help. As an added bonus, one lucky earmark tracker will win an Amazon Kindle. From Washington Watch:

Earmarks – they’re how members of Congress and senators steer federal funds to special interests and projects in their districts. It’s often called “pork barrel” spending because the money is divided up based on seniority and insider deals rather than the general welfare of the country. For years now, earmarking has been conducted behind the scenes, but the House and Senate recently required their membership to reveal earmark requests. The door to the smoke-filled room has been unlocked, and now we’re going to kick it down! The problem is that earmark information is spread out across congressional Web sites, and it’s in many different formats. The solution? We’ve created a system for compiling earmark data in one place—actually, for you to compile it. We want you to add earmarks to our database through our earmark entry form. Pick your hometown member of Congress or Senator, your favorite representative—or your least favorite—and put their earmarks in the database.