Skip to content

SCRAPER_README.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
62 lines (45 loc) · 1.55 KB

SCRAPER_README.md

File metadata and controls

62 lines (45 loc) · 1.55 KB

Discharge Petition Scraper

Purpose

This Python script automatically fetches the latest signature count from the House Clerk's official discharge petition page and updates the data/signers.json file.

Usage

python3 update_signatures.py

What it does

  1. Fetches the HTML from https://clerk.house.gov/DischargePetition/2025090209
  2. Parses all member signatures from the table
  3. Updates data/signers.json with:
    • Total signature count (currently 215)
    • Individual signer details (name, party, state, district)
    • Timestamp of last update
  4. Shows breakdown by party (e.g., "4 Rs, 211 Ds")

Requirements

  • Python 3.6+
  • No external dependencies (uses only standard library)

Schedule Updates

To run automatically every hour:

# Add to crontab
0 * * * * cd /path/to/epstein-petition-tracker && python3 update_signatures.py

Output Example

Fetching discharge petition data from https://clerk.house.gov/DischargePetition/2025090209...
Parsing signature data...
Found 215 total signatures
Breakdown: 4 Rs, 211 Ds

Summary:
  Total signatures: 215
  Signatures needed: 3
  Individual signers found: 215

Updating JSON file...
✓ Update complete!

Current status:
  Total signatures: 215
  Signatures remaining: 3
  Last updated: 2025-09-04T15:02:02.744882

Notes

  • The script is resilient to page format changes and will save debug HTML if parsing fails
  • All new signers are automatically added with proper attribution
  • The website's JavaScript (tracker.js) will automatically load the latest counts from signers.json