How You Can Help Grow PeopleCount.org

In the past few months, a lot has happened on my PeopleCount.org journey. There have been a lot of worries and concerns, and at times, I’ve been trapped in my own thoughts. Other times, it’s been exhilarating and full of inspiration and communication. Whatever I’m experiencing, I always come back to the same reason I started PeopleCount.org: All of us can work together designing our future and moving forward to achieve collective goals. Continue reading

The PeopleCount Story, Part 2

In Part 1 of the PeopleCount.org story, I shared how the idea of PeopleCount.org formed. What if we could have a better kind of survey — one that was more expressive and where the user could update it as the issues changed? What would a world look like if we all could vote for what we want? The next step was to bring the idea into the world and build a solution.

I began telling lots of people about the idea. Three friends were especially interested and agreed to be on my board. In discussions, we realized forming a business instead of a non-profit would allow us more flexibility and a greater chance of getting established. We needed to name the project, but lots of good names were already taken. Finally, I settled on Democracy for the 3rd Millennium, and bought the domain Democracy3M.org. The next step was to flesh out the solution and write the business plan.   Continue reading

What I Want

In a country of, by and for the people, I want to know what others think, and I want to express my opinions and be able to change them at times.  I want my opinions to matter.  I have some problems with our current system.

My opinions don’t seem to matter. I can write a letter or an email or phone my representative- does it make a difference? It helps me feel that I’m doing my civic duty and that I’m not giving in to resignation. My representative counts my input and rolls it into a weekly tally. It’s part of their effort to improve their guess about what their constituents think, but they know the ones that contact them are a tiny fraction of the total. Continue reading