Transparency in Legislature

Liberty
1

While transparency in the whole of government would be optimal, there are many cases where such transparency opens the USA to vulnerability by foreign actors. A good place for full transparency without concern for national security is in Congress and the States’ legislature.

We need a platform where our state’s and nation’s proposed bills are easily accessible, easily digestible, and can be open to public forum. This platform can also be an excellent tool for tracking our elected officials in their decisions on such bills and other legislative activities.

  1. A user might be able to select the congressman/congresswoman of which the user is a constituent, and agree/disagree on legislature of interest to the user. The user will then be notified of the bill’s pass or failure and how that representative voted on the bill. At the end of the representative’s term, the user can pull up a tally of the number of bills/decisions that the representative voted and whether those votes aligned with the users opinion. This will give a layman voter the necessary information on elections regardless of campaigning budgets.

  2. This platform can also host forums for political debate and lobbying. Each topic can be discussed with little censorship (barring vulgarity and lewd behavior) so that the public might participate in statewide or national discussions. These forums can provide links/pdf of the legislature being discussed along with summaries and indexes (that can be “community noted”) for ease of understanding and navigation.

  3. This platform can centralize communication between congressmen/congresswomen and their constituents, as well as provide a space where candidates can campaign on even footing. A candidate can post announcements and itineraries as well as debate openly with other candidates at any point with little moderation. This way grassroots candidates can have the same amount of reach as established candidates and will reduce the need to fund-raise for their campaign (which will discourage accepting money from superpacks, lobbyists, and corporations).