The Web was always supposed to be democratic. But for all the good government oversight resources online, local politics often fail to attract the spotlight of transparency.

After Hallwatch went under, Philadelphians were left without a resource for hard data about their elected officials.

It’s an issue that certainly interests nonprofit, non-partisan citizens’ lobby organization Common Cause PA. Enough so that the organization has harnessed legislative data API Cicero, the brainchild of Callowhill GIS development company Avencia, to launch Our Philadelphia. The Web site explores “the role of money in local politics and allow users to investigate these issues for themselves.”

Made possible by the Samuel S. Fels Fund, the site shines the light on local campaign contributions for city legislators. Users can create custom RSS feeds, search by address, as powered by Cicero, and track information and content relevant to other keyword searches.

So, for example, a Frankford resident might find it entirely peculiar that the top contributor to the campaign of his city Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez is energy drink manufacturer Cintron Beverage, to the tune of $21,500.

While it now serves only Philadelphia, Common Cause intends to expand the database to the five-county region and include more original reporting, says James Browning, the direct of development for the group. The profiles of top donors for each elected official is the result of a year-long campaign by the group to make local campaign finance records more accessible, according to a release [PDF].

“Extracting the data from the city’s and the state’s equally crude electronic and paper archives was a job in itself,” Browning wrote in an e-mail to Technically Philly.

Other features are expected to be added to the site in coming months.

Avencia’s Cicero API, which is used to generate the address specific data culling, has made its rounds among political oversight groups.

According to a release: “it currently feeds elected district boundaries and elected official information into several public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms.”

Perhaps the clearest example is Avencia’s partnership with the Committee of Seventy on online cudgel: the Redistricting the Philadelphia Region Web site, which lets citizens, “based on their address, look up their political districts, visualize them on a map and learn about the process of redistricting.”

Avencia also recently announced that it has extended ERSI’s ArcGIS Flex API to introduce support for OpenStreetMap, an editable map of the world, in its planning and prioritization software. Read more here [PDF].

The day’s primary polls in Philadelphia are open and lively already, and the Web, it would seem, is on the ballot.

In what most analysts are, of course, suspecting will be a low turnout affair and media coverage has focused on contested Democratic primaries for district attorney and city controller, one of two citywide ballot questions just might have implications for the future of online advertising.

As city political oversight group the Committee of Seventy explains the second of two ballot questions today: “currently, the Home Rule Charter imposes specific advertising requirements with respect to certain legal notices of the city.”

A yes vote on the question would allow City Council to change the avenues through which newly incorporated businesses, city contracts and public hearings are publicized.

It just might help kick newspapers when they’re down.

The passed ballot question would allow the city to essentially take away advertising dollars mandated for the city’s daily and legal newspapers and offer the chance to use a variety of other sources, most notably including online news sources.

Currently, such legal notices can only run in certain newspapers, most prominently the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, Philadelphia Business Journal and Legal Intelligencer. For a struggling print industry, that’s guaranteed money.

Below see the ballot question in its extraordinarily and unnecessarily confusing language:

Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to authorize Council to specify by ordinance adopted by a vote of two-thirds of all its members how and when notice of public hearings on bills, notice of bills reported from committees of Council, notice of procurement contracts available for bids, and notice of proposed administrative regulations, shall be given?

The Committee of Seventy offers a recommendation for the ballot question:

Seventy recommends a “yes” vote on the Charter proposal based on the overriding need for government to have the flexibility, particularly if the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News ever cease to operate. (The threat of closure because of the papers’ bankruptcy proceedings prompted the proposal in the first place.) The City must ensure that no public hearings are held, no laws are invalidated, no requests for sealed bids are rejected and no regulations are passed without proper, sufficient and timely notice.

The nonpartisan nonprofit also gives recommendations for if the ballot question passes or not. Read that and the group’s other thoughts for today’s election here.

The DA and controller races are Democratic primaries, meaning only voters registered to the Democratic Party can vote. However, any registered voter, no matter party affiliation, can vote on judicial races and both ballot questions — the advertising question discussed above and another about posthumously promoting any police officer, firefighter, or paramedic to the next rank after dying in the line of duty.

Find your polling place here. Find your elected officials here.