What's more fundamental: the way that campaigns are funded, or the fact the most voters have no clue what their representatives actually stand for? Does changing campaign funding solve a fundamental problem? It seems to me that influence can easily be traded for things other than campaign contributions.
The energy company lobbies with millions because they can expect the benefits of lobbying to exceed the millions. The people could easily out-vote the special interests, but they run into the rational ignorance problem: with current technology, the cost of casting an informed vote is greater than the expected benefit. Isn't that the fundamental problem?
The solution, I think, is to create technology which makes it easy for voters to hold their reps accountable, thus shifting the task of accountability into the "worth it" category for regular people. That's what I'm working on anyway: http://votereports.org/
When bills are 2000 pages long, every bill is a "special interest" bill. It doesn't matter what your rep's voting record is, by the time the bill is up for vote the sausage has already been made.
Asking the public to pay attention to amendments made in committees and subcommittees is wishful thinking. The inexorable economic logic of special interests fleecing a Democratic political system crushes the intentions of the do-gooders.
> Asking the public to pay attention to amendments made in committees and subcommittees is wishful thinking.
Of course - and not my wish, incidentally. The whole point is to use technology to lower the cost of informed participation to the point that just about anybody is willing to do it. This means that somebody has to pay attention, but we want that somebody to be somebody else. That voters don't have time, but trusted intermediaries can doing legislative scrutiny for them and simplify it down to a actionable information for busy voters - a simple score. Interest groups have been issuing this sort of thing for years. Ever heard of the NRA report card? It's the lynchpin of gun advocacy political success.
At VoteReports, we're opening up the process of creating these report cards, simplifying and systematizing it so any user can create them, and building higher-level concepts and tools on top of them so any voter can get answers easily and quickly.
> It doesn't matter what your rep's voting record is ... the sausage has already been made.
So I guess courts don't matter - the crime has already been committed, right? The logic of accountability is it deters bad behavior going forward. And if politicians start losing their cushy jobs because of accountability, do you really believe they won't shape up?
And yes, as of this week we'll be adding amendments to the mix - so we'll bring the sausage-making to light by including those actions in their ultimate score as well.
I guess my logic is a little different: I'm saying, if politicians are voted for based on their actual actions, rather than party label, incumbency, or what-not, then bad behavior is punished and the opportunity for proper representation presents itself. Is that so crazy? What kind of sane political system doesn't have people voting based on the issues?
So by your logic, do courts not matter because they only intervene after the crime is committed? The logic of accountability is that consequences influence future action. Advocates can punish politicians for voting the wrong way on amendments just as easily as they can bills, by lowering the politicians' scores.
I'm not asking people to pay attention to minutia - on the contrary, I think we should make technology which minimizes the amount of attention they need to pay in order to be informed. That is, reducing the role of committees &c. in their minds.
Unless the election system is also changed, this won't work. Even if I know my congressman sucks, I might pick the lesser of two evils, because trying an alternative vote brings a significant chance of electing the opposite party.
Au contraire. For example, if we help people make sense of the incumbent vs. non-incumbents in the primaries, even in a system where 2 parties is basically mandated by law, people can more easily shift which candidates the parties actually run, vs. the ones that get booted out.
This is why term limits are so crucial. By forcing new blood into the system, you limit the effectiveness of lobbying by decreasing the return on investment in lobbyists.
The energy company lobbies with millions because they can expect the benefits of lobbying to exceed the millions. The people could easily out-vote the special interests, but they run into the rational ignorance problem: with current technology, the cost of casting an informed vote is greater than the expected benefit. Isn't that the fundamental problem?
The solution, I think, is to create technology which makes it easy for voters to hold their reps accountable, thus shifting the task of accountability into the "worth it" category for regular people. That's what I'm working on anyway: http://votereports.org/