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PeopleCount Overview

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PeopleCount has designed a political communication platform that gives politicians and voters a relationship and gives voters a relationship with each other. In the beginning, “politicians” means congressional incumbents and challengers.

The politician-voter relationship is accountability, where the voters direct and review the politician’s work. The voter-voter relationship is that of co-managers.

In the first version, there are mainly two parts to learn about.

Feature: Voting on Issues – Directing Politicians’ Work

On the issues they’re interested in, voters can answer questions to express the solutions they want on issues important to them. The results will look like survey results, but this isn’t a poll. Plus, you’ll be able to see the results for your district and state as well as for the whole country.

The questions involve voters in an issue and give them an idea of the options. When there’s a substantial majority, voters will have expectations that something can and should be done.

This is very different from surveys which usually interrupt people, many of whom are poorly informed. After a survey, if you research the issue, you can’t change your answers. And you can’t see the results. A few surveys publish results, but people only see these if they later search for them. Surveys theoretically represent everyone, but practical considerations and cost make that doubtful. Answers on PeopleCount will represent voters who care about the issue.

The questions on PeopleCount stay in your account. If you talk to friends about an issue or research it, you can come back and change your answer. You see the results and know others see them, so they have more value than survey results. Over time as the issue evolves, new questions will appear. The results from these questions inform both voters and politicians, both incumbents and challengers. Your voice matters.

Feature: Reports – Viewing Politicians’ Work

Your representatives in Congress and their challengers will be able to file a report (written and video) on the issue informing voters of progress and plans. Once questions are answered on an issue, besides seeing the results, you’ll also find a list of your politicians so you can view their reports.

After you’ve read a report or watched its video, you’ll grade it on how well the incumbent is doing representing constituents, or how well you think a challenger will serve voters. You’ll see cumulative grades as well, so you’ll get to know what other voters think of each politician.

After just one or two sessions of reading and grading reports, you’ll have a good idea of how well the various politicians will represent you on issues. When it’s time for an election, you’ll know whom to vote for.

For these reports and grades, the votes on issues are the context in which you’ll evaluate candidates, adding to the value of the votes.

Cost of PeopleCount

In the beginning, PeopleCount will charge politicians a fee so that not everyone runs for office, but it’ll be a few percent of what a campaign currently costs. For this cost, they’ll get high-quality communication with voters on the issues voters care about. To ensure affordability by challengers, it’ll cost at most one-quarter of the funds they raise.

Later, it can be funded by voters. In fact, by drastically reducing the cost of a campaign, PeopleCount will make public funding of campaigns extremely affordable. Today, the average successful Congressional campaign costs over $2-$3 per citizen, $5-$8 per voter. That would be 2-3x the cost of paying for services for all campaigns.

A Few Benefits

Ending the Incumbent Advantage:  Challengers will be able to report to voters on an equal footing with incumbents. In some ways, the incumbent advantage will shift to challengers! Many of the issues have been around for a long time, desired by voters, but ignored by Congress, whether because of objection by the party or due to corruption- lobbying by industry.

Passing Popular Legislation: On issues with overwhelming majorities, incumbents will be under pressure to pass legislation right away or be graded poorly. There are many of these. (Some anti-corruption issues have over 90% approval rating.)

Lessening Extremism and the Power of Parties: If incumbents and voters know what voters want, and incumbents can report to them their progress and accomplishments, incumbents can represent voters rather than extreme groups and parties. They’ll be accountable to ALL voters. When an issue is divided, their report can justify compromise.

Lessening the Political Power of Money: Incumbents will easily be able to stay in touch with all voters during their whole tenure in office without raising money while in Washington DC, freeing up the 2-4 hours they currently spend daily fundraising and being influenced by lobbyists.

Lessening Corruption: This is part of the previous point but deserves highlighting. It is politicians’ need for campaign money that fuels most corruption, not the availability of money. PeopleCount will let them communicate better with voters for much less cost.

Lessening the Information Bubble: All voters will hear from all candidates, not just the ones they agree with. (An information service is also planned, exposing voters to even more sources.)

Increasing Competition in Elections: PeopleCount will allow challengers to very easily reach many more voters and show voters their strengths, via their reports and cumulative grades.

Creating Unity: On many issues there is quite a bit of unity. One organization has a list of over 150 issues on which informed Americans agree. Since we can’t vote on issues and see the results today, unity is hidden from us. Partisan voices often falsely claim extreme positions are wanted. PeopleCount will let people unite on issues, not depend on parties.

Fewer Extreme Positions: Currently, we don’t know what most people want on most issues in our state or district, so we don’t know what candidates should do. So candidates adopt positions, usually adopting the party position, and often a more extreme version of it to appeal to extremists who are more likely to make a campaign donation. On PeopleCount, candidates will be able to promise to support voters, rather than parties.

Follow-up: There are issues that 80% or more of voters agree on. On some anti-corruption issues, over 90%, yet Congress does nothing. On PeopleCount on such an issue, you’ll be able to pressure the incumbent to get it done.

Much More is Possible: There are many ways for the parties to share power in Congress. Bills could be smaller and simpler. Members of committees could be rated on the committee’s performance, penalizing them for holding up solutions that voters desire. The thousands of pages of federal law could be reduced so that processes and projects can be completed more quickly. Voice votes could be prohibited, so every legislator is on the record on bills. More features can be added to PeopleCount giving information on candidates and issues by integrating with existing non-profits and media. There are more options for grading reports as well. Once many people are on the site, we can experiment with other features, such as mock elections that use different kinds of voting methods.

Rewarding for Voters

It will be rewarding for voters to be able to vote on issues, see what all concerned citizens want, and hear from politicians just on those issues. It will be rewarding to hear about progress on important issues and give feedback in the form of grades, even right after the election. It will be rewarding to hear from challengers about what the incumbent is ignoring or doing poorly.

Rewarding for Politicians

It will be rewarding for politicians to focus on issues and serve voters instead of having to announce rigid positions. It will be rewarding to reach more voters easily and not have to spend time raising money. Incumbents will appreciate being able to serve voters instead of attacking the other party and posturing on hot-button issues.

Summary

Much more than we know is possible for politics. Many sites have been created that let people vote on questions, issues, or bills, but they made fundamental errors. And alone, this ability does little. By coupling it with politicians reporting and grading those reports, PeopleCount will have the minimum features necessary to make politicians truly accountable to voters and independent of parties and wealthy donors.

If you’d like to support PeopleCount, please post a link to this post on social media and add your email address to our mailing list.

You can’t Prove that Fixing Democracy is Impossible

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Most people think that politics can’t be fixed. When I ask them if it can be fixed, most say, “That’s impossible!” But they can’t prove it. They’re guessing. Most people think that if the answer isn’t obvious, there’s no answer. Most people think that even if the answer is not obvious, if you tell them the answer, they’ll understand it. Often they’re right. But sometimes, such as with fixing politics, they’re mistaken. Continue reading →

If People don’t Research, can PeopleCount work?

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What if people don’t research? Someone on Facebook said PeopleCount is interesting, but it won’t work because of “assumption that people are rational and will take the time to research candidates.” We do not assume these.

I hate to research, but I’ll vote if it makes a difference

I’m a nerd, and even I hate researching candidates. Every so often I hear something negative about one of my incumbents. But elections are so expensive, there’s never a choice. And even if there is a bit, It’s too hard to research. Media has bias and rarely reports about the candidates on the issues I’m concerned about. Most of the important ones are never even covered by the media.

I don’t want to research. But I WILL read a short report on an issue I’m concerned. If I get to grade it, I’ll even pay attention! But only if the grade is counted and the tally is public. I don’t want to judge representatives relative to each other. But I’ll judge both on a single issue. IF they’ll account to me about it.

Millions of people sign Change.org petitions. Why? Partly just do SOMEthing. The feedback on them is almost nil. I want the feedback. I want to see that it’s making a difference.

PeopleCount gives you a reason

Today, not only do people not research candidates, but most don’t even research issues. And they care about issues. What’s the point? The more you know, the more frustrated you are. Without the insane-curiosity bug (that the “elite” have), there’s really no reason. So most people don’t. If we get to vote on decent issues on PeopleCount, there’s suddenly a reason.

Let’s say I see a post on Facebook about how I can now vote on an issue I care about.

I go there, and there are some good solutions. “Oh, THAT’s a possibility? I think I like that.” And then I see another interesting one. Do I want one, the other, or both? So I make a choice.

Next time I hear something about it, having voted, I’ll listen more. I might even ask a knowledgable friend about it. A week later I get a notice that the voting has gone from a hundred to a thousand people on one issue. “Can this really happen?” When I hear occasional news about it, I listen even more carefully.

Add reports

Then come’s a report from a challenger. She says the issue has been known to be popular for a decade, but my incumbent has done nothing about it. “That’s just wrong,” I think to myself. I give the challenger and A and the incumbent, who hasn’t yet filed a report, an E.

The media picks up on it and suddenly there’s local news about how bad the incumbent is on this very popular issue. It’s almost two years before the next election and the challenger is getting free news!

Then the incumbent reports and gives some excuses. “Fair enough,” I think. I give him a C. The challenger then reports and tells me some of the incumbent’s conflicts of interests on this issue. There are even two links to sources. I click on one- it seems real. I change that last grade to a D…

Making a difference

I’ll bet BEFORE the election comes, Congress actually passes the legislation.

I’ll bet that WHEN the election comes, people vote him out anyway.

And then the count, in my district, hits 100,000.

There’ve been voting sites before. They failed, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, they failed because they couldn’t make a difference. PeopleCount will not make those mistakes. We’ll make a difference.

Please add your email address to our announcement list.

Please take PeopleCount Seriously

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Someone who’s into political transformation linked to me on LinkedIn. I called him, hoping. He was just linking to interesting names he had collected… If you’re like him, here’s my message to you:

PeopleCount is different

There have been a lot of projects to change politics. As far as I’ve seen, PeopleCount is different- designed to have a large, immediate impact. Others intended to, but were never designed to.

Many efforts started small and tried to prove themselves. They haven’t thought out their marketing, their value to people, the desirability of their offering, or their distribution and growth plans. When they couldn’t must a real solution, they followed the “best practice” of winging it and hoping that copying others’ best practices would suffice.

I apologize for my apparent arrogance. I’ve heard very few solid criticisms of PeopleCount. But I did hear them, and then I addressed them.

Would you know a solution if it slapped you in the face? No.

If you saw a project that could REALLY transform politics in wonderful ways, would you drop everything and join it? Or at least take initiative and support it energetically? If not, never mind. Just tell me and we can disconnect on LinkedIn.

If you saw a project that could REALLY transform politics, would you recognize it? Of course not, at least at first. If it was that obvious, it would have been thought of and built years ago.

If there was a project that could REALLY transform politics, what kind of effort would you put into recognizing it? Most people give it 2-3 minutes. If it doesn’t get through their thick skull and the even thicker mists of cultural myths in 2-3 minutes, they figure it’ll never work.

PeopleCount is what you don’t even know how to listen for.

This is that project. I try to simplify it, because no one wants to read the details. I try to simplify it, because people don’t get the gist of it, due to cynicism, cultural myths, lack of imagination and lack of thinking skills.

A few people finally get the simple gist of it, and are interested. And then they dismiss it for being too simple. When they start thinking about complexities, it seems too daunting, so they go back to thinking it can’t work.

I’m pretty brilliant. In my free time, I often do math and logic puzzles. Those are exercises in seeing what’s really going on. Only a tiny fraction of the population can solve them. I can spend a full day or two with a difficult one- much more thinking than most people put into anything. It’s very disappointing, but not too surprising, that people can’t understand PeopleCount.

The good news is that users won’t have to. They’ll appreciate it naturally by using it.

I need help

The bad news is that people who can fund it need to understand it first. And that takes the kind of thinking that few people are able to do, and few of them employ often.

I need some help to finish building it. Sure, I’m bright. But not bright enough to launch a startup alone- that’s very, very rare and takes more than brains. It takes a lot of work and teamwork. I need funding to work on it myself full time. I need a team, just like every other decent project. I need money for a few months for a small team to finish building it and launch it. I’ll need a bigger team to grow it the first year till we reach sustainability.

Please keep reading, the conclusion is in the next post.

America was Never Designed to Deliver Accountable Politics

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We think America’s political system is broken in every way possible. It’s not- it’s working perfectly! It’s perfectly producing the terrible results we have. It was never designed to produce anything else.

The Founders were amateurs

We have a political system that was built by people with no experience forming a democracy. They never designed it to produce good results. They tried. And they did a good job for their time. But they knew nothing about design, sociology, or even communication compared to today’s experts.

After they designed it, they did no testing. After they launched, they identified no measures of success and measured nothing. Of course it doesn’t work very well. But in the beginning, it didn’t have to- it just had to create an appearance of national independence over largely independent states containing largely independent communities.

Idolizing their work keeps it lousy

The founders had great PR over the centuries. Americans are taught to be proud of our founders and their accomplishment. We could tell our children:  “The good ideas of our founders served America pretty well for about 75 years, till the civil war. Since then, it has only worked well when we were lucky. And boy, were we unlucky at times.”  But no. We teach them that America still has the best political system in the world. That’s the perfect thing to teach to ensure our lousy system isn’t fixed.

What’s needed? Accountability

If we started to design a political system, we wouldn’t even know the purpose of the design.  I looked into this a few years ago. Most people didn’t even know where to start. Or they picked unworkable ideas, like, “they’d do what the citizens wanted.”  I did some research. I talked to lots of people for a good two months.

What I found was this: We need it designed to deliver accountability to voters. That includes not being accountable to wealthy donors and special interests. But it’s not just “making Congress accountable in elections.” It turns out that’s almost no accountability at all. If Congress were truly accountable to voters, everything would change.

What’s accountability, and how can a system deliver it?

What IS accountability? That’s a great place to start- realizing our cultural notions about it are poorly defined.

How can a system deliver accountability? That’s another excellent question. Think about how long you’ve had complaints about US politics. Yet this is probably the first time you’ve considered this question.

These are new thoughts for most people. And few people understand new thoughts from reading. You have to read it slowly, absorb it and ask questions. Even better is, when you hear your mind arguing against it, realize your mind is thinking with ideas that keep the status quo in place.

Americans have been dissatisfied with government for many, many decades. “Throw the bums out” is not a new expression. All your current thoughts, even the ones that rebel against the status quo, are already part of the status quo. They’re part of the forces that keep the existing system in place.

Keep all this in mind as you find out about accountability.

Think Different and Fixing Politics is Possible

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Consider how wrong we’ve been. A complete lunatic is president. He’s doing blatantly unconstitutional things, irresponsible things, immoral things, dangerous things. And we:

  • Didn’t see it coming
  • Let it happen by not being able to rally behind a less-hated candidate
  • Let it happen by not being able to give third parties a chance
  • Couldn’t even get senators to question the electoral college vote
  • Have no way of acting together to stop him

And yet, people are trying the same things. Raise money, sue, protest, march, complain.

We do what we know to do, not what works

Those are all the things we know to do. They’re standard political things. They are completely inside-the-box of our current political system, the system that’s failing us.

Think! Is there a doable, quick way of fixing American politics? Think of the solutions you know- each one takes at least one political fight and at least one change in the law. Those are NOT going to succeed.

It’s time to try something new. Very, very few of you seem to be able to think differently. And when you try, you expect to see something new quickly or you think it won’t work.

If you read my blog, you know I’m very bright and it took me months to find a real solution. It’s pretty simple, but it goes against our usual thinking. The solution is simple, but thinking about it is difficult.

Remember when flying was impossible

Think back to when no one could fly. What took being able to fly was a small team trying over and over and over again. They started with not just a belief that it was possible, but an understanding of the fundamental problem that was preventing a solution. They solved that and flying became a possibility.
The well-funded team believed in more powerful engines. They had lots of backing and resources and they never flew. Why did they think they needed a more powerful engine? Because it was easy to think that. They knew how to think that so they pursued it.

Wilbur and Orville thought they needed better control and a light plane. They worked to be successful with what they had. And they carefully calculated what they needed, performed experiments and measured. It took them about 7 years.

Let’s do this with politics- think different

PeopleCount has a brand-new political theory, created after months of a new analysis. Unlike other theories, it predicts the current dysfunction. This new analysis suggested a solution and that has now been worked on for years, with a lot more analysis. Every single part has been analyzed and planned for. In many hundreds of conversations, no insurmountable problem has been identified.

It’s now time to put a team together, complete the first version and start testing. Please, do your part. Add your email address to our announcement list and make a small donation.
Yes, we need people. But no, making a new party or supporting an old party or a new special interest group to attack one little piece of the problem isn’t going to help. There’s no science behind that. In fact, it’s exactly our dedication to those strategies that has gotten us into this mess.

Please, think different. Support PeopleCount today. Look around. We can’t afford to delay.