Our earmarks contest continues to make great strides!

We’ve collected more than 10,000 earmarks, input by transparency heroes across the country who want to get a handle on how members of Congress and senators direct spending to special projects in their districts and states.

Many people have entered the earmarks of their local representatives and wrapped it up there. Many others are then going on to enter nearby representatives. And we have a good crew working to be top earmark hunters. Some are taking charge of entire states.

The person who enters the most earmarks will win an Amazon Kindle; number two gets an iPod Shuffle; and number three wins a regular deluxe fruitcake!

There have been some strong new entrants and shifts in the leaderboard since our last update. As fun as the spur of competition is, of course, the point is to make this earmark data available to the press and public, changing the way Washington, D.C. does business. So you’re all winners!

The contest continues until we have collected all congressional earmarks or October 1st, the beginning of the new fiscal year.

And now, drum roll please, the current standings!

#1 – to win an Amazon Kindle: lgist
#2 – to win an iPod Shuffle: curlymanster
#3 – to win a deluxe regular fruitcake: sdwalker
#4 – Transparency Guru: ZachV
#5 – Open Government Maven: bias
#6 – Accountability Czar: ArtsyAndi
#7 – Earmark Stalker: bgarst
#8 – Pursuer of Good Government: HansP
#9 – Congressional Conscience: jwbjerk
#10 – Fully Qualified Data Entry Clerk: doi76

(current to mid-afternoon Saturday, August 1st)

Many earmarks remain to be collected – there’s no telling who the winner will be. There are lots of people just outside the top ten, and the competition is tight at the top – so keep entering those earmarks! You must be logged in to receive credit for your earmarks.

Only complete earmarks get credit. If you’re pasting in data from a PDF, please try to clip out linebreaks, which are unattractive when the information is displayed elsewhere. Read more about the contest here. And here is our earmark entry form.

Again, the important thing is that this project will make available to millions of Americans how their money is spent in Washington, D.C. Together we are improving the way our government works. Thank you to everyone participating in the contest, and thank you to those of you taking care of just one or two local representatives and senators.