Imagine you're a voter, but otherwise have no responsibilities for politics. That is, you're not a politician, don't work for one or for a party (a few hours per week of volunteering is okay, don't work for a political issue organization, and do not work for a news, public relations or marketing firm that serves politicians.
It doesn't matter to your representative If you make a lot of effort to call or write to your representative, theoretically, you can influence what s/he thinks most people want. But you don't know if it's true- you don't get direct feedback about what your representative does with the information.
And then almost never ask your political opinion. At times, you might receive a questionnaire about one, or a few topics from your party a representative or a senator, but it almost always comes with a request for a donation. If you fill it, you have no idea what impact it had. They don't even share the results with you, much less a report about the influence the questionnaire had.
There's no way to share your opinion with the rest of the constituents for an office. Sure, you can tweet them or post them on Facebook, but you don't even know how many people saw it.
Once in a while, you're called to answer survey questions. But even then, the results aren't shared with you. Rarely will the survey company even tell you who sponsored the survey. They never share the results with you.
PeopleCount will let you vote on an issue on a website, with a secure login and a private account.
As soon as you vote, you'll see the results, the current tallies for your district, state and the country. Your vote on an issue will count and be counted.
That is, your opinion is asked for, often with questions where you aren't sure of the answer. That's fine- you can either vote and then research the answer, or simply leave it blank. After you decide on your answer, you can come back and vote, or change your vote.
Your opinion will matter because other voters and your representative will see the results as well. Your opinion will count.
A representative should be representing what voters want, not just wielding their power. So how do you find out what voters want?
Currently, we have surveys done by private companies and organizations. But they ask very simplistic questions to a few surpised citizens. Does it matter what random people think if they're not informed about an issue? And rarely does a poll cover just one district or state. Polls are done all the time for politicians, but rarely do they share the results with voters.
Besides that searching for polls takes work, often they're done only once a year, and often none are done on many subjects.
At any point, you can view the vote count for an issue, seeing what the constituency wants. Your rep should be working on delivering these.
You'll see the counts for your district and state as well as for the whole country.
Later, we'll include pointers to polls on an issue, so you can compare what concerned voters want with what random voters want.
It's very hard to know what your representative is doing on the issues you care about, unless they've sponsored legislation or voted on a bill recenty and you know how to look that up.
Plus bills are complex, so a vote might not even tell you what side they were on. Maybe they voted against a bill because It included things on other subjects they didn't like It didn't go far enough or went too far It was worded poorly, perhaps it allowed corruption
You could research position statements, but that again takes effort. And you still won't know if they're actually doing it.
You can call them, but odds are they'll take a message, or tell you that your rep sponsored this or that bill. Rarely is there ever a plan with dates and milestones, or even a way to get updates as progress is made.
On each issue, you can check a box demanding a monthly report from your representative. They'll know you care about this issue so they'll report to you.
They will tell you what's been accomplished on this issue and the next part of the plan. If your rep is good, they'll point you to a more detailed plan on the issue.
Remember, all this is in the context of what voters want. For instance, if voters in your district want something different from what most people in the country want, you'll see that in the vote counts. Instead of expecting legislation that favors your district's desires, you'll expect to hear how your representative is trying to make the bill more of a compromise.
At the same time, addressing the issue questions and hearing from your representative and challengers, you'll get to know the issue better. Besides reporting to you about their progress and plans, they'll also advise you about what they see as the best way forward. At times, they may even ask you to change your position on an issue. For more information, they'll refer you to other websites, perhaps even their own.
Challengers will be able to report to you as well. If they're good, they'll give you additional perspective on what your rep has been and should be doing, and what they would do differently if you elect them.
One theory is that we hold them accountable in elections. But often there's no one running against them who seems like a good alternative. Plus, it's a long time between elections, especially for senators.
Another theory is that the media holds them accountable. But that just happens if there's a scandal. Media rarely reports on a single member of Congress, unless they're pretty famous. Even then, media mostly reports on what they say, rather than what they're doing on a particular issue or bill.
Neither of these gives much accountability. Accountability is the relationship a manager has with employees. In fact, we even talk about these people as the ones "who report to" the manager, or the manager's "direct reports." The manager directs the employee, the employee promises to do the work, and the employee regularly reports to the manager on the issues the manager says are important.
But there's more. The manager also judges the employee, gives them feedback and monthly, quarterly, or once or twice a year, evaluates them.
Accountability is also the relationship between a teacher and students. The teacher specifies the assignments, the students address them and hand them back. The teacher evaluates them and gives grades.
We currently have nothing like this in politics. We need a way for voters, together, to evaluate our government officials.
On PeopleCount, you'll grade a politician's reports. You'll grade them on each issue you're interested in for honesty, completeness, how representative they are, and on the quality of their work- how effective they were at doing their job on the issue.
You'll also have easy access to the politician's overall grade, a compilation of their grades on individual issues.
You'll be able to grade challenger reports as well. When the next election comes around, it'll be easy to pick whom you'll vote for. You'll see how you've graded them all as well as the average of the grades they've gotten from everyone.
Money sways elections. In Congress, "90% of candidates who spend the most win". This can be misleading, since a more popular candidate can draw donations from more voters. On the other hand, few candidates get most of their funds from small donors.
PeopleCount has nothing against limiting contributions. But we've had these limits for decades and they haven't worked. Perhaps it's like the failed drug war: It doesn't work to try and limit the supply. What works is to lessen the demand.
After all, what do these contributions buy? Communication with voters. Ads, post-cards and letters are all push-marketing, pushing messages onto voters, rarely on a subject the voter is interested in. They're expensive because they're inefficient.
PeopleCount solves this by reversing control of the communication. Instead of politicians pushing ads to voters, voters pull reports from the politicians on the issues important to them. Instead of costing $.50 to $1 per postcard, letter or ad that's actually read, it'll cost $.01 to $.10 per voter that actually reads and grades a report per month, regardless of how many issues the voter grades.
This will greatly raise the quality of communication a campaign has with constituents while lowering the cost of a campaign by a factor of 10 or more.
At the same time, PeopleCount will allow better campaign finance limits to be passed. A survey in 2018 showed that 66 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of independents, and 85 percent of Democrats support a constitutional amendment. Yet this isn't a campaign issue because few voters know about it. With PeopleCount, the numbers would be obvious. Any challenger would be foolish not to promise to support it. When the grades begin to come in, any incumbent will quickly support it, too. In fact, to protect their seats, they'll probably pass it well before the next election.
A large majority of citizens want some common sense gun-laws passed. They don't because Democrats add a lot more to such bills and Republicans obey the gun lobby to oppose them. In fact, in Feb, 2017, Trump and Republicans passed a bill making it easier for the mentally ill to buy guns. While there were some problems with the rule they overturned, they just rescinded the bill instead of fixing it. This occurred despite the fact that 89% of Americans favored preventing the mentally ill from purchasing guns.
On that same page, you'll see over 80% want background checks for guns purchased in private sales and guns shows, and barring people on no-fly or watch lists from owning guns. 65% of more want 3 other laws as well.
There are many more such issues. 75-80% of people want term limits for Congress. Over 90% want conflicts of interest in Congress to end, as well as ending their ability to profit in the stock market from insider information.
Yet year after year, nothing is done. The main problem is that challengers have such poor communication with voters that they simply don't have time to raise these issues.
PeopleCount will put these issues before voters. Voters will show their overwhelming majority. Seeing this, they'll demand action. Challengers will seize on these issues to show that the incumbent has been ignoring them. To counter this criticism, incumbents will also promise to act. Probably, they'll even act before the next election.
About 1/2 of people eligible to vote don't. Many of them aren't even registered.
In my conversations with people, they don't vote because it's a negative experience. Issues they care about seem not to be addressed no matter who they vote for. And there's no good way to express their opinion.
Often, these people stop caring about politics altogether. Actually, they still care, but they avoid political news, as much as they can. The more they care, the more frustrated they become.
The same is true for being well informed. Why make the effort if nothing will be done? The only thing that hurts more than caring about a political issue that is stagnating is knowing the details about it.
Many people feel the more they care and learn about issues, the more they're punished.
On PeopleCount, these people can quickly and eaily express their desires and grade their representatives and politicians just on the issues they're interested in. If it's a popular opinion, there's a good chance there'll be action. If it's not popular, that will be obvious, too.
The best remedy for apathy is to reward caring.
The best remedy for being poorly informed is to give them
There's a ton of party divisiveness these days. In my opinion, the Republican party does more of it than the Democratic party. Right wing pundits conflate Democrats, "the radical left", socialists and even communists. Not only do they blame all sorts of societal problems on them, but they say if Democrats win the elections, our future will be much, much worse.
Another consequence of this is that power in Congress has been consolidated into the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate.
The cause of this is party power. Individual members of Congress can do nothing by themselves- they need their party. The parties know this. So they can seek to maintain and consolidate their power by focusing only on the issues that divide them.
In America, voters have the ultimate power. But that power is only expressed during elections. Over the last 7 decades, the parties and campaigns have created new ways to use communication and information technology more powerfully, while citizens have not. The parties have become more powerful.
The other facet of this is that Americans have been "sorted" in the parties. That is, since the parties have power, Americans have had to prioritize their political desires and completely side with the one party that most closely matches their priorities. Meanwhile, some reports say that overall, the bulk of Americans are more in the center.
On PeopleCount, voters need not follow either party. They can vote up one issue conservatively and another liberally.
The same is true for politicians. Being in direct contact with voters for little cost, they can easily step away from the party line. Between elections, they can keep in touch with their voters, still at low cost. They'll be able to win reelection without party support.
This also can impact the concentration of power in Congress. There are a number of ways that the rules of Congress can change so that neither party is in charge. Currently these ideas fall on completely deaf ears because the parties' power is so entrenched.
But citizens don't like the divisiveness. Around 60% say we need a new party. Pollsters don't ask this question, but I'll bet a vast majority of Americans will support issues that lead to power sharing.
For voters, there's often little competition in elections. In many states, gerrymandering ensures that only one party can win. Before the primary, money and publicity for competitors is often lacking. And mostly the more extreme voters turn out for a primary. So the incumbent, or a more extreme candidate, almost always wins.
Thus in the general election, there's usually just a choice between an extreme candidate and the other party. This gives centrist voters almost no chance of electing a moderate.
Plus, our plurality voting system makes it incredibly hard for third-party candidates, such as independents, to win. And 88% of states have laws that say if you lose the primary, you can't run as an independent in the general election. So a moderate who loses in the primary can't run as an independent.
The solution for this is communication. Using PeopleCount, a centrist can be in communication with voters for a whole year before the primary. They can ensure voters know that the real decision will come in the primary. They can ensure voters know the date and what's at stake.
Or, they can run as an independent from the beginning, promising to caucus with the state's dominant party. They'll be able to gain enough traction on issues to defeat party extremists without a huge budget.
And once PeopleCount has become popular, issues can be put before voters that lessen party power, such as ending gerrymandering and supporting instant-runoff or approval elections.
PeopleCount will enable candidates who are committed to serving voters to run much more competitive challenges at low cost, become known and win.
There are many good people in politics, but many are not. Politics these days has become all about selling oneself, rather than serving the people. It has become about taking credit, rather than taking cues from The People and leading in the direction they prefer. It has become about hoarding power, rather than channeling their natural power.
Many members of Congress say they were inspired to run to serve the people. They become frustrated that they're trapped by the gridlock. They're then tapped mostly to spend hours daily fundraising, while severe problems persist for decades. Many say their calling is to unite the country. But party propaganda divides us all.
The parties thrive on discord and rhetoric. But the country thrives on unity and action. The parties thrive on blame and shallow philosophies. But the country thrives on carefully planned solutions and compromise.
We end up with showmen, salespeople hawking talking points, plus good people resigned to bureaucracy and show. We end up with debt, division, and