Political accountability of members of Congress must be more than just holding elections. We have elections now without real political accountability.

Cultural definitions of Political Accountability

From Wikipedia a few years ago:

Political accountability is the accountability of the government, civil servants and politicians to the public…

It goes on to say:

Generally, however, voters do not have any direct way of holding elected representatives to account during the term for which they have been elected.

Now, in May 2022 it says:

Political accountability is when a politician makes choices on behalf of the people and the people have the ability to reward or sanction the politician … Accountability occurs when citizens only vote to re-elect representatives who act in their interests, and if representatives then select policies that will help them be re-elected. Governments are ‘accountable’ if voters can discern whether governments are acting in their interest … so that those incumbents who act in the best interest of the citizens win reelection and those who do not lose them.”

So we have to know what our representatives are doing and we must be able to elect new ones if they’re not serving us.

The World Bank has a paper on it:

accountability involves two distinct stages: answerability and enforcement. Answerability refers to the obligation of … public officials to provide information about their decisions and actions and to justify them to the public…

Enforcement suggests that the public … can sanction the offending party or remedy the contravening behavior.

In the US, the enforcement part currently can only happen in elections- we can only sanction officials by not reelecting them. And this is almost impossible because of the cost of effective campaigns, the 2-party system, and the huge incumbent advantage.

The answerability part is almost completely missing. Once in a while, such as during a scandal, the press tries to force answerability. And nowadays we can find out information about some of our representative’s actions through websites, such as GovTrack.us and OpenCongress.org. But these do not get our officials to answer us. For instance, we rarely hear a thorough justification on how a particular vote on a bill was actually in our best interest. Rarely do we even hear know what the majority of voters preferred.

The American Institute in Taiwan sums up how we normally hold political accountability:

The primary political accountability mechanism is free and fair elections.

As above, because of our 2-party duopoly, high cost of campaigns, and the incumbent advantage, plus gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, we rarely have free and fair elections.

Being answerable, frequently

But this is far different than the accountability that ordinary Americans have in their jobs, where you’re accountable to your manager daily, weekly or monthly. You’re answerable for anything your manager wants to know, frequently.

Real political accountability

In the accountability of your job, your manager has her own ideas about what you should be doing. She gives you instructions, or at least directions, guidance. And she has expectations, her own ideas about what you can accomplish. Guidance from and expectations of voters are missing in the accountability of Congress and the president.

Real accountability is when

• the manager guides the worker and has expectations
• the worker answers the manager’s questions regularly
• the manager judges the worker
• the manager is able to fire the worker

To make real political accountability, we’d also need ways that all constituents could communicate with each other to effectively manage together. We’d need to share guidance, expectations, and evaluations.

What if we expanded our notion of political accountability to include all this, with us, the people, being the manager? What if we could have this kind of accountability with Congress?

Try sleeping on this. We’ll go over it again in the next post.

In a previous post, we looked first at cultural definitions of political accountability. Then at what I called real political accountability. Below is the definition from the previous post. Read it slowly, carefully. Imagine that together, you and the citizens of your district together are the manager. Imagine your representative in Congress is the worker.

Real accountability is when:

• the manager guides the worker and has expectations
• the worker regularly answers the manager’s questions
• the manager judges the worker
• the manager is able to fire the worker

To make real political accountability, we’d need ways to effectively manage together. We’d need all constituents to communicate with each other. We’d need to share our guidance, expectations, and evaluations. And we’d need to be able to elect a new person.

It’s hard to imagine. It requires new thinking.

When I talk to people about it, most people think it’s not possible. They conclude that without really thinking it through. Most people have thoughts like:

• “There are too many of us- we can’t all be bosses.”
• “Politicians need donors more than approval.”
• “Voters don’t keep informed, so just believe political ads.”
• “Politicians won’t report to us- they don’t want to be accountable.”

And on and on. There are thoughts about corruption, primaries, gerrymandering, parties, and more. These automatic thoughts prevent real thinking.

I didn’t come up with it in a day. It took about 6 months. And I’ve been talking to hundreds of people about it and working on it for years. Please, don’t expect it to make sense all at once. And even if it does make sense, don’t expect it to rearrange all your thinking very quickly.

Usually, it takes a conversation of 15 minutes to two hours for someone to get it.

Imagine: What would it take?

And some possibilities we never, ever consider. Even in the articles yesterday’s post linked to in Wikipedia, legal dictionaries, and U.N. papers, the articles didn’t ask: What would it take to have our elected officials be truly accountable to citizens?

We have accustomed ourselves to an incomplete definition of political accountability. It’s not just a cultural adaptation, it’s a human adaptation. It’s high time we question it.

Please, stop reading now. Maybe go for a walk and just think about the question:  What would it take to have our elected officials be truly accountable to us? What would it take for us all to be the bosses of our politicians?

This is a hard question. I’ve talked to hundreds of people, and no one had a decent answer. (For more on this, see the first article in another series, about how America has political accountability in its blind-spot.)

We’ll answer this in the next article, about what is needed for true political accountability to exist.

In this article, we’ll look at how the missing parts of our usual definition of political accountability are needed. They are vital.

In the last article, we looked at how the usual definition of political accountability was incomplete- it left out two of the three parts of true accountability. The first missing part is how we, the people, could take the part of the boss in a relationship of accountability. The second part is the essence of accountability, answerability, having politicians account to us for their progress on the issues we say are important.

We saw that true accountability, like one has with a boss is:

• the boss guiding the worker and having expectations
• the worker answering the boss’ questions and being evaluated by the boss
• the boss being able to fire the worker

Usually we just think of political accountability as the last part, being able to elect the representatives of our choice. And even on that third point, American elections fall short, because the parties dominate the elections, and big-money dominates the parties.

We’ll take a close look at each needed part:

In the next 3 posts, we’ll look at each of these questions about what is needed for true political accountability:

1. How can we voters be the boss? How can we know what we collectively want, guide our representatives and know what results to expect?
2. How can we get politicians to answer our questions so we can evaluate them?
3. How can we have real competition in elections and free ourselves from the domination of the wealthy?

A real solution

These are the questions that have driven PeopleCount.org’s design. This is a real solution to our political problems.

It’s “real” in the sense that it’s doable, it’s workable. It’ll take less effort than a single congressional campaign. It’ll leverage the power of communication and the power of the web. It requires no laws to succeed. Probably certain changes in law will help, but it’ll work well enough to cause Congress to pass those laws.

In the next post we’ll look at how to build the first part of accountability, the foundational relationship, where the voters are the boss.

In this post, I’ll answer the first of the three questions posed in the last article, how to create the first part of accountability. How do we establish the boss-employee relationship with our elected officials?

• How can we have a relationship with our representatives?
• How can we voters be the boss?
• How can we know what we collectively want?
• How can we guide our representatives and know what results to expect?

One way to do this is by citizens voting on issues and seeing the results, for our districts and states as well as for the country.

By voting on issues, we guide our politicians.

Currently, they don’t know what we want, so they guess. Many read their mail and email and write down what people tell them in phone calls. Plus they read letters to the editor. And then they guess. Sometimes they spend a few thousand dollars on polling. After some largely uninformed, surprised citizens give their opinions, they guess.

By voting on issues, we’d be able to give our opinions. By voting on a website we can return to, we can inform ourselves by reading, talking to friends about it or seeing what a trusted expert says. We can guide our politicians with an informed decision.

By seeing the results, we’ll be able to set our expectations

The results for our district tell us what our congressional representative should work for, how to represent us. The results for our state tell us what our senators should work for.

The results for the country clue us into what we can expect, what’s reasonable.

If the country is split 50-50, or 55-45, we can expect a fight. Even at 60-40, a compromise is probably in order.

Seeing the results, acting as the boss becomes possible

Currently, not knowing what we collectively want, we don’t know what our officials are accountable for. It’s no wonder they’re not accountable to us with this basic foundation missing.

Now imagine we see the results of voting on issues. Each of us can see that together, we-the-people have guided our politicians. We have a good idea what they’re accountable for. We can begin to act like the boss.

In the next post, we’ll look at the essence of accountability, answerability.

In this and the next post, I’ll answer the next question posed two articles prior. How do we create the second part of accountability, answerability? How can we get politicians to answer our questions so we can evaluate them?

Answerability – the essence of accountability

Do you have a boss, a manager, an employer? Does she just announce every year on whether you still have a job or not? Of course not.

At regular intervals, you, the employee, talks to your boss and answers her questions. Did you accomplish your goals? If not, why not? Do you just report on the things you want to report on, the parts that went well? No. She asks you to report on the things that are important to her. And she judges you.

I think it’s wrong that Marijuana is a “Schedule 1” drug. To me, it should be a Schedule V drug, or removed from the list entirely since it’s safer than alcohol. When I asked my senator about it, she said it’s dangerous and most Californians don’t want it legalized. She didn’t answer where it should be on the schedule. I want her to. More than that, I want her to report to everyone on it.

Demand reports on issues and they’ll report

On PeopleCount.org, when we release the new version, you’ll be able to check a checkbox on each issue saying you want a monthly report.

Currently, most members of Congress have their staff answer single emails or written letters. When hundreds of people signal that they want accountability on an issue, they’ll answer.

Note the report might just be, in the beginning, how one party or the other is blocking on an issue. Or maybe they’ll say it’s scheduled for committee meetings later in the year. But maybe they’ll say who in that committee they’re putting pressure on. The point is, they’ll report.

And you can bet that challengers will. Challengers would love to! They are hurting for inexpensive ways to reach you. Sending a short report to you on an issue important to you is ideal for them. And they’ll be thinking hard about what they would do different, better. And that’ll put pressure on the incumbent to do the same, to do the job better, rather than settle for the usual excuses.

They will want to report

Right now, most congressional staffs are inundated with emails, letters and phone calls. Contacting your senator or representative’s office is currently the only way to make your voice heard, unless you can find a local group that supports your issue. And these staff members, while often not paid much, still chew up a lot of their budgets.

By reporting on PeopleCount, they’ll be able to report to you much more efficiently. In fact, when someone calls in to state their opinion, in the future the staff’s response will often be, “If you didn’t vote for this on PeopleCount, please do. If you did, we’re listening and our latest response on the issue is right there.” This will free up many of these staff members to spend more time working on legislation.

And currently, representatives and senators have to spend a lot of time fundraising so they can buy expensive ads to communicate with voters. By reporting to voters on issues approximately monthly, they’ll be able to spend so much less money on ads that they’ll no longer need to fundraise while elected. That’ll be a huge incentive to report.

Plus, of course, this will be a real way they can be accountable to voters. If they don’t report, the other candidates will promise to deliver accountability.

The next post shows that it’s not just about delivering a bunch of information. The report is the gateway to interacting with constituents.

Answerability can be powerfully implemented using interactive reports. This will make them engaging plus put teeth into them so voters can truly hold their officials accountable.

This is the 4th in a 9-part series looking at how PeopleCount will implement, or support, the three principles that make up accountability, and how it will address the problems with them that exist in America’s political system. This is the second of two about the second aspect of accountability, answerability. In the last post, we saw that answerability means they answer you. And not just on the issues they want to answer. On the issues you want answers about. But there’s more.

You judge them

Imagine answering your boss’ question about your work. It doesn’t stop there. He or she then judges you (sometimes with consequences, such as sending you back to work on it some more, or trying a new direction.)

Currently, you can send your congressperson a question. When they answer you, it’s pretty much over. That’s not accountability. You also need to judge them and they need to hear it. And your judgement should matter, it should be part of an ongoing judgement created by the whole constituency. So we’ve designed that into our system.

On PeopleCount, we’ll start with a simple way of doing this. After reading one of your congressperson’s report, you’ll be able to judge them by giving them a grade.

In the beginning, it’ll just be one grade. You’ll grade them on well they’ve done their job of representing the district (or state, for a senator), according to their report. Remember, you’ll know how the other constituents, and all Americans, have voted on issues. (We also have some ideas for other grades, such as completeness and honesty.) Challengers and the press will weigh in so that you’ll get a broader perspective in case you have one of the (few?) not-completely-honest politicians.

You’ll grade the reports of both incumbents and challengers. When the election comes, you’ll be able to see the average grade you’ve given each, to remind you of what you’ve thought of their reports.

Plus you’ll be able to see the average grade of your district or state on each report, to see what others thought of it.

And the representative or senator will see it, too. You’ll be giving them feedback.

And you’ll be able to see their average grade from everyone in your district or state on all the issues. You’ll see a measure of how satisfied or dissatisfied all you voters are with the job they’ve done. This will also help you act in concert with others in the election. For instance, while the district might largely support one party, it could easily help a challenger in the same party win the primary.

PeopleCount delivers answerability, the essence of accountability

We have more ideas for how to make this work, but will start with the basic functions outlined above, and get your feedback.

But the bottom line is: Your elected officials will be accountable to you. You’ll guide them and have expectations. They’ll report to you and you’ll judge them. And they’ll produce results much more aligned to what the voters want.

Freedom from being accountable to the party and the wealthy

One of the key parts of being accountable to the people is not being accountable to others. Currently, not knowing what we want and not being able to report to us, politicians huddle together for safety in groups, the parties. It’s the party that’s responsible for most positions and for battling the other party to make progress.

There’s a downside to this. Our populations are at most 60% from one party, so party positions don’t represent all of us. Being able to know what we want and how we feel judge their answers, our officials will be freer to work for us regardless of what the party says. They’ll begin to be accountable just to us, not to a party.

Similarly, being able to communicate to us for very low cost, they’ll be free of the need to fundraise. They’ll be free of the need to be accountable to the wealthy.

In the next post, we’ll tackle the third part of political accountability- fire-ability.

Four posts ago I said three main parts of accountability are needed. The next post described the first part, how PeopleCount delivers the foundation of accountability, the relationship where people are the boss. The next two posts were about how PeopleCount delivers answerability, the essence of accountability, and the value of interactive reports. In this and the next posts, I’ll discuss how PeopleCount delivers the final piece of accountability, fire-ability.

Fire-ability is the ability to fire the incumbent and elect a new representative. It comes from an informed electorate and free and fair elections. This article and the next covers having an informed electorate.

Informed Voters are required for Fire-ability.

If voters aren’t informed about issues and have an opinion, they can’t judge if their representative or senator has been serving their own interests. If they aren’t informed about what all the voters in their district or state think, they can’t judge if their members of Congress are representing all their constituents decently.

And if they aren’t informed about what their officials want, have worked on, and have done, they won’t know whom to vote for.

This helps explain why 80-90% of Americans disapprove of Congress’ performance, yet voters keep re-electing their incumbents. Without being informed, they’re making poor choices.

American citizens are not informed.

American citizens are not informed about politics.

1. Most Americans on not informed on issues. This article says most didn’t even understand the failed Iraq war which accounts for more than 10% of our national debt.

2. Most Americans are not very knowledgable about our basic political system. What’s the name of the current Vice President? What are the basic freedoms guaranteed in the first amendment? Does the Supreme Court have the power to make new laws? If you’re reading this article, you can probably answer these. But many Americans can’t.

3. Americans don’t know what we collectively want. To find out, you have to search the web for polls (surveys) about every separate issue. And most polls are updated only once a year. Over 80% of Americans have, for years, desired action on the following issues. But, not knowing that most of us support these, nor whether their representative supports them, voters don’t insist on them.

• universal background checks on gun sales
• anti-conflict of interest laws for Congress
• term limits for Congress

What if you want to find out the opinions of people just in your state? Or just in your district? You can’t. Most polls that are easy to find in searches are only performed at the national level.

4. Few of us know what our members of Congress think, what their stands are, what they vote for. Few of us read the newsletters most members of Congress produce, much less ask them about the issues they omit. Fewer citizens look up their voting records.

Many voters don’t even realize these pieces of information are missing. They just know they have little power and government is outside their control. Most Americans are frustrated and resigned, even cynical.

With these emotions, many don’t even stay informed on issues. When they learn about issues, they just get more frustrated. And they can’t do anything with the information they learn. So why go to the trouble and pain? So many stop. It’s so pervasive, that many Americans have a well-deserved reputation for being stupid about politics.

In the next post, we’ll see how the addition of PeopleCount.org will remedy this.

Using PeopleCount, American voters will become much better informed. The last article discussed how being well informed is crucial to the fire-ability aspect of political accountability, but Americans are not well informed. This article discusses how PeopleCount solves this problem.

1. People will feel they should keep informed about politics

You’ll vote on issues, so your opinion will matter. You’ll see that many other citizens have opinions. You’ll feel involved in politics, responsible. Learning about issues will become part of your patriotic duty in making government work. Political issues will seem more important, worth knowing about.

And PeopleCount will make being informed easy by providing links to information. (This will be mostly missing at the beginning, but will improve over the first year.)

2. People will want to know about our government

With political issues being more important, so will the shape and form of our government. It doesn’t matter day to day to most of us that there’s freedom of the press. But imagine you’re voting on issues involving the press.

Say you’re asked: Must the press be honest? Should we allow them to be sued if they knowingly say something that’s not true? What if what they say is misleading?

Say you’re asked: Should satirical websites should have a big “SATIRE” notice written every 2 inches, so people don’t accidentally think their news is true? And should political images that are not real be marked as such in a caption and in a watermark?

These kinds of questions will make people think harder about what “freedom of the press” means. Much of our educational system fails because the knowledge isn’t used- it doesn’t seem relevant. If we make political information relevant, more people will learn more about it.

3. We’ll know what other voters want

PeopleCount will tell us what we collectively think in our districts, states and in the country. It’ll be much better than polls. They just tell us the opinions of random people who have no idea they’re going to be asked about the issue. PeopleCount will report the opinions of people who care enough about an issue to vote.

Plus it’ll be constantly updated. People change their minds all the time. On PeopleCount, they’ll be able to change their votes. We’ll be able to see week by week, month to month how people’s desires for society are evolving.

4. You’ll know what your officials think and do

If you want to know what your representative thinks, a link to his/her report will be right there on the same page as the issue. Click a link and read it.

Plus, you’ll be able to read the reports of challengers. They’ll be quick to call attention to any lies or half-truths told by the incumbent.

Knowledge is power

It’ll be empowering to be asked for our opinions and see the total votes. We will feel responsible for guiding Congress. The responsibility of voting and grading our officials will give all of us a tangible reason to be informed.

Being better informed, we’ll make better choices in electing our officials. This is crucial for fire-ability, the third part of accountability.

Fire-ability also requires free and fair elections. The next article will be about free elections.

Free elections are needed for America to have the fire-ability required for true political accountability.

Fire-abilty requires three things- an informed electorate, free elections and fair elections. In the last two articles, we saw that an informed electorate is needed, and that PeopleCount will help our voters stay informed. Now we’ll look at free elections.

American does not have free elections

By “free”, I mean any adult is free to run for office. We are not even close to this in America because of the domination by the two major parties and the high cost of an effective campaigns.

“Free elections” also means that voters have free choice among candidates. Because campaigns are so expensive and many good candidates can’t afford to run, we have very little choice in elections. The domination by the two major parties makes it worse. And then gerrymandering makes it even less free.

Most people can’t afford to run

Most districts are dominated by one party, and the incumbent wins in all but 1-2% of congressional races. This is obviously dysfunctional when you consider that citizen approval rates for Congress have been 20% or lower for the last 3 elections and 40% or lower since 2006.

The main reason for the incumbent winning is that money is crucial in elections. Today, money is the key to communication with voters. House campaigns averaged $1.7 million in 2012, and the candidate with the most money usually wins. Incumbents have the time and the leverage to collect a large war chest of funds for the next campaign. By leverage, I’m referring to corruption. If donors want something, they often contribute to both parties.

Plus, incumbent names become well known while they’re in office, giving them an advantage. A competitor must significantly out-raise an incumbent to win, or have a much larger group of volunteers.

In addition, voter turnout in primary elections is low. This means existing power brokers, or a well-organized group, can pretty easily sway an election, and the incumbent is usually tied to these power brokers and the party faithful that turn out in primaries. A lone candidate or one with a small team has little chance.

PeopleCount will deliver less-expensive elections

PeopleCount goes a long way to remedying this by giving candidates an inexpensive way to compete in elections. When most voters are using PeopleCount.org, candidates will be able to reach voters easily and cheaply on the issues that are important to them.

Using PeopleCount, more challengers will reach more voters. Ads are tiny sound bites on, to voters, mostly random topics. On PeopleCount, candidates will be able to deliver richer communication about the topics each voter is interested in. They’ll reach the voters at low cost. Not only will more candidates will run in the party primaries, but there’ll be more third-party challengers. We’ll have more competition in elections. And in their reports they file on the PeopleCount website, they’ll compete to serve the people.

Being able to run effective, inexpensive campaigns means money will be less important. More politicians will be able to run without using big-money donors. And when elected, our representatives will be able to stop spending so much time fundraising while in office.

PeopleCount will free more people to run for office. And once in office, it’ll free members of Congress from the need to constantly fund-raise.

In the next posts, we’ll look at two aspects of fairness of elections, our voting system and gerrymandering.

Fair elections are also a key factor in having the third necessary aspect of political accountability. This third aspect is fire-ability, the ability to not reelect incumbents who are not effectively representing their constituents.

This is the sixth post in a series of articles on how PeopleCount will deliver accountability. The first posts talked about creating the relationship of accountability between voters and politicians. The next covered creating answerability. The previous three posts are about two aspects of fire-ability: supporting an informed electorate, having free elections. This and the next one are about fair elections.

Fair elections means no monopolies

Currently, American politics is monopolized by the two parties. It’s completely unfair to voters who want to state their preference for a third party.

Many want Bernie Sanders to run as a third-party candidate. Most people who support Bernie favor Clinton over Trump. But a vote for Bernie means their preference between the Hillary and Trump won’t be voiced. If Trump were getting 40% of the vote, if Bernie runs, he might pull 25% of the vote to him, leaving Hillary with 35%, so Trump wins.

Our voting system is called “plurality voting”, or “first past the post”. It only looks at who has the most votes rather than people’s real preferences. This voting system perpetuates the two-party monopoly. Because of this voting system, Bernie won’t run and voters will be denied this choice. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Other voting systems exist

There are other voting systems that give third-parties a chance, like instant-runoff elections which are used in Australia. An more-simple one is approval voting, where each voter can check-off all of the candidates they’d like to see in office.

Our voting system keeps third-parties from having a chance. Both Congress and state legislatures are monopolized by the two parties. They will never vote to change the election system. Parties want to hold onto their power. By keeping this issue away from American voters, the parties preserve their monopoly. You won’t even find “voting systems” mentioned in party platforms.

And it’s not just in the main election that it can make a difference. This article concluded that Republican voters in Florida preferred Cruz narrowly over Trump. If instant-runoff elections had been used, Cruz would have beaten Trump in the primary. The bottom line: our voting system is very bad for any race in which there are more than two candidates.

But if the American people want it changed, that could be an issue on PeopleCount. Voters could pressure candidates, and challengers could differentiate themselves. After all, almost half of Americans want a third party. So we probably want an election system that makes voting for a third party possible. If citizens use PeopleCount to champion this cause, we can easily get it passed. It could take just a few months. Or at most, by the next election, as challengers take up this cause to gain support.

In the next article, we’ll present the other major affront to fair elections, gerrymandering.