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