This is a pretty important point. I doubt more than 10,000 people in the U.S. read PIPA and SOPA in their entirety (only a handful of congressmen/women are included in the 10,000)
Our reactions to proposed legislation are almost entirely based on the interpretation of a few and signals we take from peer groups.
I'd like to see a great summary of every legislation with the following info in VERY CLEAR and concise language:
- factual account of what the proposed legislation does/enables
- who will love the bill
- who will hate the bill
- how much will this bill cost taxpayers per year when implemented
If we had those 4 points easily accessible for every piece of legislation, it would be a positive thing for our democracy.
In Australia, you'd just need to include the long title. From the Australian drafting procedures (instructions given to Federal lawyers who make sure the politicians haven't made a mess of the legislation):
"the drafting of the long title is very important as the long title must encompass all the matters included in the Bill. If there are matters that are not covered by the long title, the Bill may need to be withdrawn from Parliament and then reintroduced. "
A title like "Patriot Act" would be thrown out.
You could appoint drafters to do it, but I guess Americans trust politicians more than the government.
If you want politicians to do it, you could give the "Ayes" 50 words, and the "Nays" 40 words. If they really can't agree on words, you could give every member a word, and if they get together with 6 other people they agree with they can put in a seven word sentence (for or against the bill). If a majority are in favor of a bill, and the minority against it can't think of anything really wrong with it, then it's either a good bill or you need either a new democratic system or a tin-foil hat.
"Patriot Act" is the so-called "popular" title. The "official title" is "To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes."
If I had to guess, "and for other purposes" is basically a catch-all for anything not explicitly named.
It's still nothing like what an Australian law could be called. In Australia, it would be something like "Amendments to Homeland Security Act". Australia doesn't have the emotive (and misleading) titles the US does, because our legislative framework deters it.
Sounds quite reasonable to me. I do wish we had something in US law, as well. Every time a politician introduces a bill with a loaded name, it makes me want to retch.
PopVox has an “organisations endorsing” / “organisations opposing” section. It's not as gameable as finnw suggests, except for some misrepresentation: the “US Chamber of Commerce” is a large, extremely right wing lobby, some industry groups don't exactly represent their constituents; call it a start.
Whether this will work depends on who writes each of these sections.
For example if you ask the sponsors of the bill "who will hate the bill" they will always say "terrorists", so the field will not actually tell you anything and will quickly become useless.
Sounds like the should then be sacked automatically for fraud against the electorate and their position come up for re-election (with them excluded for a term).
I've been idly thinking about making a website that does precisely this. It would take a wide variety of expertise and a LOT of manpower to pull off, though. It would be great to tie this to politicians' voting records as well.
Thanks for the post, Dev (and for alerting the POPVOX team.) Also, thanks for the links to POPVOX, Tobu.
As Tobu mentioned, POPVOX is a starting place for some of what you describe. The simple origin was the team's experience with the legislative process (me as a Congressional staffer) seeing what actually influenced how legislation was written and moved through the process -- and Members' ultimate voting decisions.
I think your point that "our reactions are almost entirely based on the interpretation of a few and signals we take from peer groups" is entirely applicable to Members of Congress. POPVOX is an attempt to give people outside of Congress the same kind of information. This includes:
1) Official information
2) Where other Members stand (co-sponsorships)
3) Positions taken by organizations
4) What constituents say
On (1), we provide links to the summaries from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), for neutral, expert summaries of what the bill actually does.
On (2), Members of Congress are just like you and me. They know that they usually agree with Members X, Y, and Z; so when considering whether to co-sponsor, they may literally ask, "Is Member X on?" It is not at all unusual for one staffer to call another office and say, "My boss is looking at H.R. 1234 but we saw you guys aren't on it, why not?". This is one place where the internal caucuses play a role. You may frequently see the House "Blue Dogs" or "New Dems" taking similar positions.
To me, the area that was most influential in Congress and most underrated outside of Congress (and within the media) was (3), the statements of endorsement or opposition of the various organizations. When a Member is considering a bill, they will always want to know, "where is X group on this" (whether that is Labor, NRA, "the doctors", the enviros, the Chamber, etc.)
This is not only because these groups bring organization and resources to the fight -- it is that they actually are watching and evaluating how various bills would affect their membership. If you are a Member of Congress who cares about the environment and tend to line up with the Sierra Club most of the time, you want to know if they see any trouble with a particular bill on dust regulation. If you got an NRA endorsement and you line up with their positions, you want to know if they see red flags on a bill involving reciprocity of carry laws across the states. Congress does not have the resources to have an expert on staff for every niche issue. There is an assumption that if a proposed bill adversely affects a certain group, that group will be watching closely enough to make their objections known. (We think lowering the barrier to entry for this kind of input is an important mission for POPVOX.)
Before POPVOX, there was no one place to go and find statements of groups supporting or opposing bills, or for smaller less plugged-in organizations to even get on the radar screen. We address this by allowing any org to create a profile and register their positions on bills. While we totally agree with you that it would be amazing to have these in concise & clear language, we understand that it is nearly impossible to do that in a neutral way. Our solution was to simply provide a platform for the information to be displayed, not to provide any content. So individuals can "see what Congress sees" and make their own decisions.
The other reason that organization statements are important is because they usually indicate the opinion of their membership, in other words: constituents (4). Though many don't believe it, it cannot be said enough: CONGRESS REALLY DOES CARE WHAT CONSTITUENTS HAVE TO SAY. (I swear, it's true. They come to meetings quoting constituents. They agonize over stories they hear. They clip newspaper editorials. Organized constituents make a difference.)
The problem is that in many cases the people asking you to sign a petition or fax or form letter or tweet or post to Facebook, etc, etc, etc, are not actually getting your message to Congress in a way that can be processed. Jake Brewer identified the problem best in this 2010 article on the "Tragedy of Political Advocacy" http://huff.to/eS1URy. POPVOX changes that, and is working with Congressional staff to deliver messages to Congress in the most effective way possible AND provide a transparent record of what Congress is actually hearing. http://bit.ly/smUl6s
On your last point (about cost info), it may be something we work in later, but at the moment, I would suggest looking at http://www.washingtonwatch.com/, which breaks down each bill with its cost estimates.
We're obviously just getting started with a long way to go and really appreciate the suggestions (here and via email at info@popvox.ocm.) Please keep them coming!
Brewer's article was really useful for putting into context the problem with communicating to congress. I've never contacted Congress as I presume my input will have no meaningful impact. I think what you're working on with PopVox could change this reality by organizing citizen input & communication.
Another idea I've had is to implement something like the White House petitions for Congress with the response threshold scaled to the size of the congressional district/state. So you might need 500 votes to get a formal written response on an issue in Rhode Island, but 1,500 votes to get a formal response in California.
Another idea is to have a system to have voters elect citizen spokespersons on each issue (users vote up good commenters). If an issue becomes popular the Congress member would engage in a live video discussion with this citizen spokesperson(s). This would have a bigger audience than most townhall meeting where only a few hundred people at most can fit into a room. Instead, thousands of people would be able to watch these online discussions.
Your team's doing some great work. I hope to hear more in the coming weeks/months!
PopVox looks like it has the potential to become a fantastic site. But there is one glaring problem with it, there's too much noise -- bills for which the status is something like:
"This bill or resolution was assigned to a congressional committee on May 5, 2011, which will consider it before possibly sending it on to the House or Senate as a whole. The majority of bills never make it past this point."
If the majority of bills never make it past this point, it really should not belong on PopVox at all -- or maybe on some separate page that you can opt in to seeing (not simply opt out).
You have to realize that most people that visit your site will not have infinite time on their hands to browse through bills that will probably never even make it past the committee stage.
Focus your effort on those bills that have made it out of committee, and it will cut out the majority of noise on your site and make your site a hundred times more useful.
Our reactions to proposed legislation are almost entirely based on the interpretation of a few and signals we take from peer groups.
I'd like to see a great summary of every legislation with the following info in VERY CLEAR and concise language:
- factual account of what the proposed legislation does/enables
- who will love the bill
- who will hate the bill
- how much will this bill cost taxpayers per year when implemented
If we had those 4 points easily accessible for every piece of legislation, it would be a positive thing for our democracy.