Mashable reports two new online tools that can help you easily connect with your elected officials. Finding contact information for representatives can be a difficult and sometimes fruitless process, often placing a barrier between citizens and officials and preventing a healthy two-way flow of information.  Raise Your Voice and GovHub are making your elected officials more accessible by providing you with not only contact information in one easy step, but also a vehicle for contacting your lawmakers. Sending a message to your officials and expressing your opinion is now simple.

Raise Your Voice
Raise Your Voice offers a web tool that allows citizens to quickly and easily message their representatives without the hassle of navigating lawmakers’ websites. According to co-founder Dan Busse, the purpose of the widget is “to cut out the middlemen—the pundits and interest groups—and directly connect legislators and people.” The messaging tool—launchable from the company’s home site as well as participating news sites and blogs—prompts users to enter their ZIP Code in order to be put in touch with representatives at the federal, state, or local levels. Already several major media sources have embedded the Raise Your Voice widget for the convenience of readers inspired to political action by reading news, including The Boston Globe and The Des Moines Register, among others. The widget can also be customized for interest groups, political campaigns, and citizen activists who are spreading their message.

GovHub
GovHub is an online portal that provides a platform for political engagement by featuring contact information for elected officials across the nation. Users can find and contact county, state, and federal representatives simply by providing the user’s address. Co-founded by Nick Gaines, an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, GovHub is an effort to turn one-way political communication to “two-way, almost 3D communication” and provide a means for constituents to respond to lawmakers’ decisions or express an opinion. In addition to contacting officials, users are also invited to learn more about their representatives in government by reading their representative’s  bios, seeing their voting history, and viewing updates and discussions mentioning the elected official. Users can also track legislation that’s important to them, participate in Q&A’s with politicians, and interact with other citizens about important issues.