Do you know what political accountability is? Can you imagine how you and your representatives would act if they were accountable to you? And you could hold politicians to their promises? And you could ensure that We, The People get what we want.

As a citizen, you want your representative and your senators to be accountable to you, right? Can you imagine them actually being accountable to you?

Do you know what political accountability is to a voter?

Close your eyes and think about this for a moment. What does that look like? What would they do? What would you do?

(Really- close your eyes and think about it…)

You don’t have to answer- I’ve talked to lots of voters- no one knows! Sometimes people say abstract things, like representatives should act responsibly or do what voters want. But those aren’t specific actions. No one has specific ways our representatives would act if they were accountable.

And how would you act? Would you just sit back and enjoy it? Would you write lots of letters? Would you sign petitions? Is voting every two years in elections enough?

How would you be accountable to voters?

Imagine you were in Congress. Imagine you were representing a district. How would you be accountable?  What would you do to show people that you’re being accountable?  Again, close your eyes. Picture the actions you’d take to be accountable.

(Really- close your eyes and think about it…)

Often people say things like:

• I would listen to people.
• I would read citizens letters and reply to them.
• I would talk to people.
• I would hold town-hall meetings.
• I would read letters to the editor.
• I would publish newsletters.

Yet many members of Congress already do these. Are they accountable?  No.

My point is that we want accountability, but we don’t even know what it is. Neither we nor our elected officials know how to do it.

What political accountability is

In other posts, I’ve written about what political accountability is. If politicians were accountable to us, the voters, we would guide them and have expectations of what they’d accomplish. We’d ask them for reports on specific issues and they would report to us what they’ve done and what they planned on doing. We’d judge those reports and tell them our judgement. And we’d be able to fire them and hire someone else.

To hold representatives accountable, we’d need to guide them and have expectations of what they’d accomplish. We’d need to request, receive and judge reports and communicate our judgement. And we’d need to see others judgements so we can, together, evaluate their performance. And together we’d need to be able to fire them and hire someone else.

If you were a representative, you’d need to actually know what people want and expect. You’d have to be able to hear their requests for reports. You’d need to be able to report to voters and get their feedback, their evaluations. You’d need to be able to tailor your efforts to satisfy the people.

PeopleCount is building a system to do this. Please add your email address to our announcement list and we’ll send you an email when it’s ready.

With PeopleCount, we’ll have more accountability to people and less corruption. Continue reading →

This will discuss the second half of a system to deliver real accountability to American politics.

1. √ We guide our politicians and expect results.
2. √ They report to us.
3. We grade them.
4. We have real choice in elections.

In the last post we discussed the first two parts of the system, #1 and #2. We guide them and expect results, and they report to us. In this post, we’ll look at the other two steps, grading them and having choice in elections.

We Grade Them

You’ll be able to grade each report you receive. Knowing what the district wants and knowing what the country wants, you’ll read your representative’s report and grade her on how well she’s doing her job representing your district and doing what’s good for America.

And knowing what the state and the country want, you’ll read your senators reports and grade them on how well they’re doing their jobs representing your state and serving America.

The report will be short- a few paragraphs on an issue you’re concerned about. The reports will come roughly monthly. Maybe you’ll pick 3 issues. We expect most people will spend 10-15 minutes per week answering questions and reading a report or two.

And you’ll see their average grades. So you’ll have a sense of how well your members of Congress are doing in the district. You might love the job they’re doing and others might hate it. But we’ll all be able to see what we want and what we think of the job they’re doing.

Lower Costs More Choice in Elections

This website requires money. But not very much. Maybe a few million dollars. Compared to the $525 million already spent on congressional races, and the $900 million raised so far, a few million is nothing!

So let’s say PeopleCount costs $5 million per year. And what will it provide? People will be able to vote on issues, so candidates won’t need expensive polling. Candidates will be delivering reports on the issue important to citizens, so candidates won’t need to spend money on advertisements. Many will, but they won’t need to.

Not just the incumbents will report to you- challengers will, too. So they, too, won’t need to raise huge amounts of money to run for office. More people will be able to run. Not just the wealthy or those owned by well-connected political bosses. Normal, competent, responsible people.

Attract Legislators, not Fundraisers

Currently, to run for Congress, you have to be willing to raise well over a million dollars, plus spend 2-4 hours EVERY DAY fundraising. Many people who’d be good legislators don’t want this kind of job. But with PeopleCount, since campaigns can be small and inexpensive, fundraising can be minimized. Someone can run for office who simply wants to be a good legislator.

In our current system, public campaign financing doesn’t work. The people with the most money usually win. But with PeopleCount, modest public financing will be plenty.

Allowing inexpensive campaigns, and letting public servants serve the public instead of devoting themselves to fundraising, more good people will run for office and we’ll have more choice in elections.

Plus, Political Reform

Plus, there are a number of interesting reforms that will also help give us more choice. On PeopleCount, we anticipate that America will quickly support some of them and Congress will accept them.

In the next post, we’ll see some of the great benefits this will create.

Articles in this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

What we need is a system that can deliver real accountability to America. In this post, I’ll lay out the first half.

In yesterday’s post, we saw that accountability is the responsibility of both the teacher and the student, or the boss and the worker. Politicians can’t be accountable on their own. We, the people, must be in a relationship of accountability with them, and not just in elections. We need a system to make it possible. We need actions to take to create, strengthen and sustain this relationship. In this and the next post, I’ll outline the system we’re building.

This is what a relationship of accountability between people and politicians would look like:

1. We guide our politicians and expect results.
2. They report to us.
3. We grade them.
4. We have real choice in elections.

One of the challenges here is that, in steps 1 and 3, “we” must act together. In #1, We all need to guide them and expect results. Somehow, we have to communicate with each other as well as with our politicians. And in #3, we need to grade them and share that grade with each other.

A System for Guiding Politicians and Expecting Results

To guide our politicians, we can vote on issues on a website. When there’s some general agreement in our district or state about what we want, that’s guidance for our politicians. And when there’s some agreement nationwide, we can expect results.

You might be objecting. You might be having thoughts that we DON’T agree. Actually, there are a lot of things people agree on. We’ve agreed for years that we need to end the corruption in Congress, but the parties haven’t supported it. We’ve agreed on several moderate gun-control laws, such as universal background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. There are actually a lot of things we’ve agreed on, but the parties constantly offer extremist solutions that the other side successfully opposes. They get more donations when people are frustrated and fighting mad than when they compromise.

So the first step is us voting on issues and seeing the results.

Will Politicians use a Reporting System?

Politicians pay huge amounts of money in political campaigns to send us tiny, lousy messages in ads and postcards, plus in phone calls that bother us and knocks on the door that interrupt us. They will report to us. I’ve talked to a few. If we ask, they’ll report. They’re excited about it.

So on PeopleCount.org, when you vote on an issue, you’ll also be able to say whether you want your member of Congress to report on it. They’ll see the demand for reports on each issue.

Seeing the demand for reports, they’ll report. These are short reports about what they’re working on in that area and what they are planning. It’ll even be much easier than their current process of answering letters and emails. It’ll be easier for them, saving them time and money. They’ll report.

Next

So we guide them and expect results, and they report to us. In the next post, we’ll look at the other two steps, grading them and having choice in elections. After that, we’ll look at what this will mean for America, a number of positive side effects.

Articles in this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

If we knew what accountability was, perhaps we could bring it to politics. Do you know what it is? Probably not. As I said yesterday, we in America have a blind spot when it comes to political accountability.

What is Accountability?

Students are accountable to teachers. What do students do that makes them accountable? What do teachers do to hold them accountable?

You probably know what it’s like to have a boss- how does the boss hold you accountable? What do you do to be accountable? What actions do you take? What does the boss do? Can you articulate this, the essence of accountability?

What IS accountability exactly?

Accountability at Work and in Schools

Let’s look at how it works for a manager and a worker:

1. The manager tells the worker what needs to be done and expects it to be done. Usually with a deadline.
2. The worker works and then reports to the manager.
3. The manager evaluates the worker, continually, and in an annual review.
4. Plus, the manager can fire the worker.

It’s pretty much the same for a teacher and student:

1. The teacher instructs the student, assigns work and expects it to be done. Usually with a due date.
2. The student works, and hands in the work, or a report.
3. The teacher grades the work, and the student.
4. Plus, the teacher can flunk the student.

The student reports, and is graded

No Accountability in Politics

Let’s contrast this with politics.

1. The people can barely get their voices heard, much less steer the politician. The people expect nothing will get done. We expect “politics as usual” — huge spending and corruption.
2. Our elected officials give us speeches, but they don’t report to us. They evade our questions with impunity.
3. Other people are occasionally polled about their “approval rating”. But it doesn’t matter. Congress has had low approval ratings for years.
4. When the next election comes, the candidate with the most money almost always wins. And if an incumbent loses, he can simply get a job as a lobbyist.

Incumbents become lobbyists

We have no accountability in politics because we have no system to deliver accountability. Our politicians have no way to act accountably and we have no way to hold them accountable. We have a slight chance of holding them accountable in step 4, but the real problem is that we don’t have a relationship of accountability in steps 1, 2, and 3.

No Political Accountability => Lousy Political Results

Without accountability, what do we get? Shoddy performance, and not in accordance with our wishes.

What’s the solution?

1. We guide our politicians and expect results.
2. They report to us.
3. We grade them.
4. We have real choice in elections.

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll see how to build this.

See also the series:  Real Political Accountability, What is it?

Articles in this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

To Americans, political accountability is in our blind spot. Why is our political system focused on fighting for power, not for accountability? Because neither our politicians nor we citizens know what “political accountability” means. Do you?

(This is the first of 6 posts. For those of you that want to skim, please at least read the 2-3 bold header titles in each piece. If you really want to skip ahead, here’s the outline:

1. We don’t really know what Political Accountability is.
2. Political Accountability Defined
3. A system for delivering Political Accountability, part 1
4. A system for delivering Political Accountability, part 2
5. Benefits of PeopleCount, part 1
6. Benefits of PeopleCount, part 2

)

America is an oligarchy, not a democracy

In America, we have a notion that we live in a democracy, even though we only have the trappings of it. The 2014 Princeton study found that what the people want has no correlation with the laws that are passed. What a tiny fraction of wealthy people wants has a high correlation with laws passed. America is an oligarchy. Our taxes fund the 1%. While everyone wants a strong middle class and low unemployment, the needs of the well-connected come first. From the study:

“… economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

Americans think solving our political problems is impossible

Americans are in widespread agreement that we have political problems. But Americans assume these problems are impossible to solve, so no one tries. Well, not quite impossible. Most people think that with enough effort and money, “we” can beat “them”. But the wealthy have arranged for Democrats and Republicans to fight each other while both parties keep the tax money flowing to a few corporate interests. So we’re busy fighting each other.

The political front-runners are Hillary Clinton, committed to keeping the current system running, albeit “better” in a progressive sense, and Donald Trump, a billionaire who has benefitted from the system and whose only plan seems to be to assume power and shoot from the hip. They’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars to fight each other. Not to support democracy. Not to be accountable to the people.

And the real power is in Congress, yet those races are rarely talked about, compared to the presidency. That’s where we really need accountability. We have none.

Political accountability is in our blind spot

How else can we solve our political problems? Obama said his biggest regret is the partisan divisiveness. Yet if you look on his website, Whitehouse.gov, and begin a letter to the president, there’s no “partisan divisiveness” subject to choose, or even “political reform.”

There are solutions to America’s political problems, but they’re solidly in our blindspot. We are not listening for them. Our mythology about corruption, apathy, ignorance, us being right and them being wrong, big vs small government, all these blind us to the real problem. Our politicians are not accountable to us, the people.

Our system gives power to the people. Since politicians can not be accountable to us, other people and groups step in to take over. It’s not anyone’s fault. But this view of the problem will lead naturally to a solution.

Next, we’ll look at real accountability.

Articles in this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Let’s imagine what it would be like if we held accountable Marco Rubio on immigration for his changing positions.

Rand: You ran for Senate saying you opposed amnesty. Why did you oppose it?

Marco: Blanket amnesty isn’t the solution, I do oppose it.

Rand: But then you worked with the liberal Democrat Doug Schumer and endorsed his Path to Citizenship bill.

Marco: This is also a personal issue. I’m a legal immigrant. I’m not positive that my parents were always here legally, but they did apply for and gain citizenship. Recently I learned my grandfather was probably here illegally at times. Should he have been deported? It’s a tough issue for many immigrants.

We need a solution to the problem. So we compromised. The bill was good. It beefed up border security and proposed a wall. It had a guest worker program and an agricultural worker program. It wasn’t amnesty- it didn’t allow illegal immigrants to be citizens. If they paid fines and taxes they could merely be documented immigrants, not citizens.

Rand: But then you threatened to vote against it and then voted for it.

Marco: The liberals wanted some changes that I thought went too far. So yes, I threatened to vote against it if they made those changes, so they didn’t. Then I voted for it. Yes, the right wing of the Republican party is against any sort of compromise, and with today’s political system, they’re important if I want to stay in office. But you have to realize, 72% of Americans want there to be a way for most illegal immigrants to stay here legally.

Rand: How about when you proposed your own Dream Act and then abandoned it?

Marco: It was a good bill. Unlike the original Dream Act, mine gave college graduates the right to work here, but not permanently. They wouldn’t be given green cards. Republicans were open to it. It seemed like a good solution.

Rand: And then you abandoned it?

Marco: There’s a lot of anti-immigration sentiment among Republicans. The leadership thought it just wasn’t the right time to pass such a bill, so it was stalled. One thing about today’s political system in Congress- nothing can get done unless the leadership is behind it. And I haven’t really abandoned it. If the House speaker revives it, he knows he can count on me.

Any story can be told in a way to make someone look bad. But with a system that supports true accountability, politicians can tell their stories and we can judge them. At the same time, we can hear from challengers as well to give an the opposing viewpoint, if they wish.

In the beginning, we’ll focus on accountability on issues. After we launch, as we grow, much more will be possible. Please add your email address to our mailing list and join us when we launch this Spring.