America should focus on creating the future we want.

Three days ago, Greg Satell wrote a blog post titled: Innovation Needs To Shift From Disrupting Markets To Tackling Grand Challenges. He’s wrong, but close. His conclusion was:

Rather than looking for markets to disrupt, we need to look for human endeavors that we can empower …
The challenges we face today require us to reimagine the realm of the possible.

He’s right that we should not target disruptive markets. People in industry, venture capital and startups are already pouring resources, ideas and effort into these.

But neither should we be targeting “grand challenges.” Greg mentioned three.

His first grand challenge was a zero-carbon economy. But this is already doable. In fact, one country is carbon-negative and four are quickly approaching it. It’s doable in America, too, except our political system stands in the way. The oil and coal companies and their Republican ally ALEC spread lies, fear and doubt with impunity.

The second and third were curing cancer and making faster computer technology. Society is already focusing on these. There is plenty of financial incentive from current markets. In Greg’s own terms, these are already well within “the realm of the possible.”

What’s needed, commitment to create the future we want

What we need to do is to envision and commit to a highly desirable future. A future that’s truly great is “outside the box.” It’s not unthinkable, but it’s a pipe dream compared to the resignation and cynicism that pervade our culture. Yet we know people want it.

For climate change, one such future is a healthy climate. This is a much more desirable future than simply trying to avoid disaster.

For politics, one such future is a political system of, by and for the people. PeopleCount proposes we achieve this by adding a system in which politicians are accountable to citizens. Rather than politics of name-calling, blame and loyalty to parties, we’d have politics be about citizens saying what they want. And government would simply be how citizens work together to achieve it.

Another one for politics would be to make politics honest. Just as lying to the U.S. government is currently illegal, ThePeoplesConvention proposes a new amendment saying that lying to the public about matters of public policy is illegal.

Society should not be targeting big challenges or disruptive ideas. We should be targeting the world we want to create.

Corruption and money in politics are secondary problems. But because they seem bad and wrong to most of us, we easily focus on them.

Conclusion-jumping makes us alarmed, but ineffective

We jump to conclusions out of reactions, not from thinking. And the reactions lead our thoughts to roar to an emotional crescendo. We focus on half-thought but powerful arguments that support our focus. We go off half-cocked. Over the following months, years and decades, we plan, engage and wage the wrong war.

That’s how America got into the Iraq War. It was stupid, unnecessary, a fiasco and a debacle. And it didn’t achieve the original goals, to improve Iraq and stabilize the Middle East.

Similarly, we’ve been fussing about money in politics for a long time, with no real progress. In fact, things have worsened. Hello? Isn’t it about time we took a new look?

Secondary problems blind us to the implications of new evidence

There was the 2014 Princeton study that found America is more of an oligarchy than a democracy. This, too, appears bad and wrong! So we jump to the conclusion that there must be bad and wrong people causing it- the rich and corrupt politicians.

Much of the uproar about money in elections comes from the recent Supreme Court decision lifting the limits on financial contributions to candidates. But the Princeton study looked at Congress from 1981-2002, while we still had limits. The distraction of the secondary problems allowed us to miss this clue that something else was at play.

Pursuing secondary problems keeps us busy but powerless

What solutions are we looking at? Various ways of lessening conflicts of interest. Trying to limit the supply of money from the wealthy. Shall we limiting lobbying? We try to stop the bad people and prohibit what’s wrong. I have no objection to these, and they seem like they’ll help, or at least produce good effects. But they won’t solve the real problem, that the American people are almost powerless.

They strike me as being similar to the drug war. Trying to limit the supply of drugs instead of the demand. The real problem is the addiction to the drug. And it’s not “addiction” like greed or selfishness or lack of discipline. The problem is a lack of something else that people compensate for with drugs. Not realizing it’s really a lack, society is attacking the wrong problem.

And like the drug war, it can go on for years. There’s lots of drama, but no effect. Meanwhile, people get hurt and the problem continues.

A real problem

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I see the real problem being lack of accountability of our elected officials to voters. This points to the most powerful solution- one that our society largely ignores.

To win the drug war, we should lessen the demand. Similarly, the real problem is the necessity for large amounts of money to win an election. The current solutions, to limit the amounts the rich can contribute and give every American a voucher to direct some money to campaigns is interesting. But it ignores other possibilities. PeopleCount, besides delivering accountability to voters, will make inexpensive campaigns possible.

PeopleCount will make politicians accountable to voters. Accountability is a relationship. Relationships require communication. With PeopleCount, voters will keep politicians in communication with them, at low cost, vastly lessening the need for money, and vastly lessening the influence of the wealthy.

Plus, it’ll allow us to get new campaign finance laws passed, if we still want to. And limit lobbying. And much more.

Please support us. Please add your email address to our announcement list. A donation would be extremely helpful as well.

PeopleCount.org proposes a fix for American democracy, politics and government.

No one else proposes a fix

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What new kind of new rules could foster productivity in Congress? How could we shake up the game to produce more problem solving and compromise?

In the first and the second article about the integrity of sports vs the integrity of politics, we saw that politics simply wasn’t set up for integrity, clarity, or performance. The game of politics wasn’t set up to produce accountability. It just assumed it.

Let’s generate some ideas right now, on the fly, and see how they change the game.

New rules to foster competition

Imagine we double the number of representatives so every district gets two- the top two vote getters in each election. Usually that’ll be a Democrat and a Republican.

In the election, there are two votes. First, you can vote just for one of the two incumbents. Second, you get to pick a first and second choice for the regular election. If your first choice is an incumbent who is voted out from the first race, your second choice counts.

We could leave the Senate as it is, except maybe shorten their term to four years. And have both senators up for election at the same time, again with the same rule.

If we guarantee two incumbents are squaring off against each other in each election, would they compete more? Would one want to score points by, say, doing what the people want? Maybe they’d support term limits, or anti-corruption legislation, or campaign finance reform?

Right off the bat, this will give us a turnover in Congress of about 55%. Today it’s only 10%.

New rules to foster working together

The number of Democrats and Republicans will probably be very close with the previous changes. Let’s see what happens when we change another rule.

Let’s say the new rule is: A law can only pass if it gets 65% of the votes. Would this lead to more compromises?

Maybe. They’d be competing to do what the people want, and they’d need at least 5-15% of votes from the other party to succeed. Would we get a law passed that requires universal checks for the sale of guns? (This is also known as “closing the gun-show loophole”, and letting individuals sell to anyone.)

New rules to break up the power

One more rule change: The parties share control. Each party can have control for a number of days based on their proportion. The minority party makes the calendar. The majority party picks a 2-week period to rule. Then the minority party. Then the majority party, etc.

The rationale for this is pretty simple. Why should a party with 54% of the representatives control the House or Senate 100% of the time? How would this change the game?

And what if the chairs of the committees also changed periodically? And what if the party that controls the committees must always be the other party from the speaker of the house?

There are LOTS more possibilities where this came from

PeopleCount will create a lot of benefits for America. In the previous post, we saw that politicians will be able to run inexpensive campaigns and spend little of their time fundraising. And we’ll have more people running for office.

Of course the biggest benefit is that politicians will serve the people. And not only because they will be reporting to us and receiving grades.

Competition to Serve Voters

They’ll also serve us because challengers will be watching them carefully and reporting on issues that people care about. Say Joe Gladhand was pandering to a local industry, trading earmarks for campaign contributions. This is the kind of thing that a few political enthusiasts track. In our current system, they have to try to get a reporter’s attention. And then reporters try to get public attention. But reporters want something that’ll be sensational for a general audience. With PeopleCount, the enthusiasts can inform challengers. The challengers will quickly bring it to the attention of the voters that care about it in their own reports.

Currently, challengers compete with incumbents only by raising lots of money. This is difficult because people with money tend to support incumbents. With PeopleCount, candidates will compete on the issues. Incumbents will compete by serving the people better.

Less Apathy and Ignorance

Today, half to 2/3 of registered voters vote, and only about 2/3 of eligible voters are registered. Why? Because voting doesn’t deliver accountability. Nor does it communicate what people want. Voting is neither rewarding, nor engaging. And it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Many people feel politicians are all the same. They’re all servants of the corporate/political machine.

If you listen to politicians, they only talk about the most superficial of issues. And they often stake out emotional positions on issues they can’t do anything about, such as abortion or health care. So you get to choose between someone who’s pro-abortion or anti-abortion. You don’t need to read anything to decide that. You don’t need to grapple with the more difficult issues of whether an abortion should be allowed after a rape, incest, or in case of a health issue. Our current system doesn’t reward being informed.

But with PeopleCount, you don’t just vote for a personality- you actually vote on issues. And your opinion influences society immediately. Right away it’s part of the totals that everyone sees. Plus, there’ll be more interesting questions, not just the superficial ones.

I’ve asked people why they don’t care about politics. The answers I’ve heard most are that caring doesn’t make a difference, and caring about something they can’t control is frustrating, sometime even painful. So people avoid engaging with issues. Many just stop paying attention.

Real Public Servants

Do you really want to vote for someone with political positions? I don’t. I want someone who’ll represent what we all want. I want someone committed to solving society’s problems. I don’t want them to go to Washington and stubbornly maintain their ignorance. Currently they do that even if their constituency changes. We’ve seen this with gay rights issues. The political forces would rather sue each other in court than ask the people what they want.

In the current system, they argue rather than look for solutions. If they find a great solution or a good compromise, they ignore it, because the party is all about sticking to a single, simple position. There’s no way for them to lead us, to ask for our support.

If my representative discovers a great solution on an issue I care about, I want to hear about it. With PeopleCount, I could even change my vote to show my support. Or a question could be added asking which of several different compromises I’d accept.

The next post is about more benefits, the last in this series.

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

Recently some guy contacted me and was supportive. We talked and then exchanged a few emails. I said perhaps he could give me some feedback on the questions, when the software approaches alpha.

(Note: Alpha is when the site is suitable for potential customers to see and try and give us feedback. Beta is when everything seems to work at least for one customer set, and we want to do real user participation.)

He said, “What questions?”  Maybe the email thread just wasn’t clear. But if not, then for him, and for you, let me spell it out again.

What is PeopleCount? High Level

PeopleCount will be a site where you and your politicians can have a relationship called: Accountability.

To do that, you need to be like a boss, or a teacher. You need to guide the worker and have expectations about what they should be doing. They will report to you and you will judge and grade them.

By sharing your guidance and your grades with all other citizens, we’ll all be able together to hold politicians accountable. Since they’ll be communicating with us effectively on the issues important to us, they won’t need money for expensive campaigns.

What is PeopleCount? Questions, Answers and Reports.

Questions

To guide your politicians, you’ll answer questions about what you want for our future. They’ll be about issues you’ve heard about, and some that are rarely in the mainstream press, even though, for many of them:

• Americans are roughly in agreement about them
• Congress doesn’t act on them

We’ll start with just four categories of issues, and about a dozen issues total. Each issue will contain a few or a half dozen questions. We, democracy, will need you to answer them so your representatives can know what you want.

And so your fellow citizens can know what you want so we all know what Congress should be doing.

Answers

You’ll be able to see the results for your district, state and the country. What your district or state thinks tells you what your representative or senator should be working on. What the country thinks tells you what has support, what you can expect. So, with the answers, you can set your expectations.

Currently, they tread carefully. If they do something and a thousand constituents object, they can get a lot of bad press. That’s not fair because 1,000 people are less than one percent of an average district. But, not knowing what most people want, they must listen and fear.

With the answers on PeopleCount, our members of Congress can see what we think and want. They can move forward with confidence.

Reports

The next part of PeopleCount is the reports. You say on which issues you want reports, and our politicians will submit them, roughly monthly.

This will be great for politicians. They want to communicate with you. They WANT you to know what they’re doing and/or what they are planning. In ads and postcards, they can’t tell you much and can only mention the vaguest subjects, and it’s very expensive. PeopleCount will be very, very inexpensive, and they’ll be able to report to you focusing on just the topics you’re interested in.

Being the boss- judging the reports

Finally, you’ll judge each report on how well the politician is representing you. And you’ll give it a letter grade.

Plus, you’ll see what everyone in your district thinks of the job the official is doing. Come election time, this will be crucial.

But come election time, you’ll know a lot more. And your politicians won’t need a ton of money to run a campaign. They’ll be working to satisfy us, the people.

Please help us get started. Please put your name on our announcement list and make a donation. You’re also welcome to like our Facebook page.

In a comment on another blog post, one guy asked:  “Can you please explain how people will communicate to elected officials and vice a versa and how this will free them up to represent us better?”

First we’ll look at the communication to our officials. Next, from them to us. And finally I’ll write about how this will free them up to represent us better.

PeopleCount will help your officials hear you

Currently, our officials can’t hear us. They receive 200 million letters from 4-5% of us every year, like a thousand a week.

But that means they never hear from 95%-96% of people. And of the people they hear from, they only hear about a few issues. There’s very, very poor communication from us to our officials.

They receive so few, that rarely are there 20 on the same topic. Someone who works with members of congress told me that 20 letters on the same topic in a week will sway them, will get their attention. In a district of 700,000, that’s 1 of every 35,000 people. That doesn’t represent the people. But it makes a difference.

And even those are too many for them to make sense of. The conscientious representatives categorize them and count them and track them. Many read them and “get a sense” of what people want. Many probably don’t even read them. Their fumbling around with a very, very inefficient and imprecise form of communication.

They don’t know what we want.

Plus, few people express anything other than hot-button issues or issues in the news. There are many, many more issues that people would care about, if they knew about them.

With PeopleCount, you’ll be voting on a couple of issues every week. Let’s say half of American adults vote on two issues a week. It might take 5-10 minutes. That’s 100 million people sending 100 messages a year. That’s fifty times more communication to our officials.

PeopleCount will improve communication to officials as well.

Plus it’s better organized. Instead of having to read and categorize each message, it’s tallied for them automatically.

And it’s not just about headline and tabloid issues. Even when we launch, next month, you’ll find a wealth of issues to vote on that you actually care about, but aren’t in the press. And there are many more to come.

Plus, these are not just messages- they’re backed by accountability. With each issue you’ll be able to say whether you want monthly reports on it. The official will know you’re listening to her. And judging her. She’ll know you’re listening for results. When the elections come around, you won’t forget about this issue.

Currently, our communication to our officials is in a vacuum. No one else hears us. We expect are letters will have little or no effect. And unless we put a lot of effort into tracking the issue, the issue probably won’t even effect how we vote in the next election.

Part of accountability is us, the bosses, having expectations. When we see how everyone in the district has voted, we’ll know what the representative should be working on. And when we see the results for the country, we’ll know what’s doable. If our expectations aren’t met before the next election, we’ll all know they didn’t do their job.

This accountable communication is much, much more powerful than what we have now.

In the next post, we’ll look at how PeopleCount proposes