We have added a small but important feature to our site that should make it much easier to find people on LegiStorm even if you don't know the exact form of their name.
The names of all the congressional staffers on our site come primarily from official salary records. If we get other information that suggest those names are a bit off (and they sometimes are), we will correct them. But that still leaves a lot to be desired because Jonathan may be the person's name but someone searching for Jon won't find him.
Thanks to a new feature, that's changing. We now give users the capability of searching under alternate names, whether that is a nickname or a maiden name. And users can also suggest alternate names for our site.
Take as an example the veteran political strategist Cathy Gillespie, the wife of former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. We have her official name listed as Catherine H Gillespie because that's how she was listed in salary records. But now we also list her more common name of Cathy Gillespie, and if her high school friends want to find her, we also have her listed by her maiden name of Cathy Hay. http://www.legistorm.com/person/Catherine_H_Gillespie/22016.html
Of course, we don't have alternate names for tens of thousands of congressional aides in our database. We have only a relative handful right now, but we plan to add more over time and we have added the capability for users to help us out. On every person's page below their name we have a "Suggest an alternate name" link. So please help build out our database by adding alternate names you know. We will screen them for appropriateness before putting them on the site
