PeopleCount.org

Our mission is to empower people to be responsible for and create effective and accountable government

PeopleCount is addressing the root cause of the problems in our political system, that politicians are not accountable to voters. It will start with Congressional politics.

Accountability is a relationship, like the employee/manager or student/teacher relationship. For politicians to be accountable to voters, voters would need to direct the politicians, be able to demand reports, and evaluate those reports.

PeopleCount will be a political communication web platform on which this would happen. Directing the politicians would be possible if voters voted on issues. An issue could have a checkbox with which a voter could demand a report. Voters could then grade reports.

To work together to hold politicians accountable, voters would need to know what the majority wants in order to know what to expect. So they, like politicians, would see the results of the votes on issues. Similarly, everyone would see the politicians' average grades. On issues where more voters agree, they'd expect results.

With this all happening on a single website, politicians, including challengers, could easily reach all voters at low cost, lowering the cost of effective campaigns. If politicians need little money for campaigns, this reduces the influence of money in elections. With incumbents not needing money for the next election, they wouldn't need to fundraise while in office, reducing the power of lobbyists.

If politicians are able to reach voters easily on the issues important to each voter, they can be much more independent of the parties. Even completely independent. If there are issues on which most voters agree, even if the parties don't want them, voters will be able to pressure candidates to pass legislation on them, even Constitutional amendments.

There are many excellent proposed laws for political reform. But the efforts to pass them have almost universally failed because they're trying to use the dysfunctional political system to fix itself. They're trying to fight to win, when the system is already set up to be an arena in which the political parties fight for power. Fighting them is a difficult and costly strategy.

Instead, PeopleCount changes the environment in which the political system exists. The system will then adapt to this new environment, lessening the power of money and the parties, increasing the power of voters. With the changes PeopleCount will bring, many of these political reform efforts can succeed.

See blog.PeopleCount.org for more information.