What’s Missing: Effective Political Communication

In the past 12 years, politics worsened.  Unnecessary wars were waged, often poorly, rights were violated, climate change denied, huge economic mistakes had global repercussions, the national debt soared, unemployment surged, and wealth became increasingly concentrated.  And all of it happened as citizens became more and more disempowered and political discourse became more divisive.  How can this be turned around?

Systems have behaviors.  Problems are usually caused either by an anomaly or the design of the system or both.  Though we have plenty of anomalies, what I see is that the results we have are a natural consequence of the design of our system.

Our system of government was designed during a time when travel and communication were slow, the country was sparsely populated and industry was primitive.  During the past 200 years, people have always tried to game the system and use it to their advantage.  People fought back.  In the past 30 years, the practice of influencing government has been honed and refined.  It’s time to fight back again.

Today, with modern communication and organization technologies, large, wealthy organizations have gained political power.  Our government is almost completely manipulated by these organizations- the parties, corporations and special interests.  While our constitutional foundations are sound, they weren’t designed for today’s world.  Our current system cannot deliver a responsive, effective and accountable government capable of supporting a thriving society.  It can only deliver what we have, a divisive, dysfunctional government that often not only can’t avoid problems, but can’t even react well to them and often can’t solve them.  Some kind of government reform or political transformation is required, but what?

This state of America is roughly inevitable.  Little power is left in the hands of the people because we, the people, are not organized.  We retain the ultimate power, but it’s almost useless to us because we don’t know what we all want, and we can’t communicate effectively, either with each other or with our politicians.  Without effective communication, we’re left with broadcasting and ads, shouting into the political din.  A natural side-effect is that elections are expensive.

The problem with America is that we, the people, don’t have effective political communication.

And we can remedy this.  If Americans vote on issues at PeopleCount.org, we can know what we want and we and politicians can know what they’re accountable for.  After attracting users, PeopleCount’s next goal will be to show the results, so we and our politicians can see what we want in our districts, states, and in the country.  We’ll then add to this site an accountability system, a revolutionary communication layer allowing politicians to communicate effectively with us.  This inexpensive system will both enable officials to be accountable and allow more challengers to communicate with us, giving us real choice in elections.  Our promise is that, with your participation, within four years we’ll have able people representing our interests, with solutions in place to our deficit and debt problems, global warming, campaign finance and much more.

PeopleCount.org is a system that enables millions of people to communicate effectively so we can design our future together.  It’s the missing piece to bring America back to having a government of, by and for the people.

What works in America can go global, for global issues, to solve conflicts between countries, and to empower democratic communication in other countries.  The world is ours.  If we work together and can constructively and clearly communicate, we can achieve anything.  Come begin this journey with us.  As part of your civic participation, vote today on PeopleCount.org.

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 3

In Part 2 of the PeopleCount story, I told how we made a business plan, formed a partnership, built a first product, and prototyped the website. Next, we incorporated, polished it and got ready for a launch.

The first website was simple text and somewhat long-winded. Although the ideas were sound, the delivery lacked punch and aesthetics. Graphics and brevity are not my strong suits, but one of my board members, Ed, an expert in branding, and my friend Jackie, a graphic designer who designed my business cards, had impressed on me how important these are.

Toward the end of September, I read about a marketing team that could help, and was excited to see they had inexpensive packages for startups, starting with tailoring the messages and website.  We began working together at the beginning of October.

Ed, brainstormed some possible main messages. The marketing team and I chose a tagline that spoke not only of PeopleCount’s mission, but also one that would empower our users to create a difference: Make your Political Opinion Count! 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

The PeopleCount Story, Part 1

PeopleCount.org started as most organizations do: an unmet need was found and we sought a way to fill it.

In late 2010, I realized I wanted to do more with my life. I was a software engineer with a small, successful company in the heart of Silicon Valley. Over the years, I had grown to enjoy working with customers much more than plugging my mind into software to build applications.

I was already taking Landmark Education seminars (ten evenings over a period of about 15 weeks), and I had heard about their Wisdom Unlimited course (five 3-day weekends over the course of ten months).  So I signed up with the intention of creating a more fulfilling career. In the course, we looked at ourselves in completely new ways. After the first weekend, I began intently “listening” for a new opportunity, asking myself “What’s next?” and “What do I want to do?” Continue reading