Do you know what political accountability is? Can you imagine how you and your representatives would act if they were accountable to you? And you could hold politicians to their promises? And you could ensure that We, The People get what we want.

As a citizen, you want your representative and your senators to be accountable to you, right? Can you imagine them actually being accountable to you?

Do you know what political accountability is to a voter?

Close your eyes and think about this for a moment. What does that look like? What would they do? What would you do?

(Really- close your eyes and think about it…)

You don’t have to answer- I’ve talked to lots of voters- no one knows! Sometimes people say abstract things, like representatives should act responsibly or do what voters want. But those aren’t specific actions. No one has specific ways our representatives would act if they were accountable.

And how would you act? Would you just sit back and enjoy it? Would you write lots of letters? Would you sign petitions? Is voting every two years in elections enough?

How would you be accountable to voters?

Imagine you were in Congress. Imagine you were representing a district. How would you be accountable?  What would you do to show people that you’re being accountable?  Again, close your eyes. Picture the actions you’d take to be accountable.

(Really- close your eyes and think about it…)

Often people say things like:

• I would listen to people.
• I would read citizens letters and reply to them.
• I would talk to people.
• I would hold town-hall meetings.
• I would read letters to the editor.
• I would publish newsletters.

Yet many members of Congress already do these. Are they accountable?  No.

My point is that we want accountability, but we don’t even know what it is. Neither we nor our elected officials know how to do it.

What political accountability is

In other posts, I’ve written about what political accountability is. If politicians were accountable to us, the voters, we would guide them and have expectations of what they’d accomplish. We’d ask them for reports on specific issues and they would report to us what they’ve done and what they planned on doing. We’d judge those reports and tell them our judgement. And we’d be able to fire them and hire someone else.

To hold representatives accountable, we’d need to guide them and have expectations of what they’d accomplish. We’d need to request, receive and judge reports and communicate our judgement. And we’d need to see others judgements so we can, together, evaluate their performance. And together we’d need to be able to fire them and hire someone else.

If you were a representative, you’d need to actually know what people want and expect. You’d have to be able to hear their requests for reports. You’d need to be able to report to voters and get their feedback, their evaluations. You’d need to be able to tailor your efforts to satisfy the people.

PeopleCount is building a system to do this. Please add your email address to our announcement list and we’ll send you an email when it’s ready.