My Call to Senator Schumer’s Office on PIPA: It’s So Much Worse Than I Thought

For example if you ask the sponsors of the bill "who will hate the bill" they will always say "terrorists", so the field will not actually tell you anything and will quickly become useless.

SOPA: https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3261 PIPA: https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/s968

"the drafting of the long title is very important as the long title must encompass all the matters included in the Bill. If there are matters that are not covered by the long title, the Bill may need to be withdrawn from Parliament and then reintroduced. "

A title like "Patriot Act" would be thrown out.

You could appoint drafters to do it, but I guess Americans trust politicians more than the government.

If you want politicians to do it, you could give the "Ayes" 50 words, and the "Nays" 40 words. If they really can't agree on words, you could give every member a word, and if they get together with 6 other people they agree with they can put in a seven word sentence (for or against the bill). If a majority are in favor of a bill, and the minority against it can't think of anything really wrong with it, then it's either a good bill or you need either a new democratic system or a tin-foil hat.

As Tobu mentioned, POPVOX is a starting place for some of what you describe. The simple origin was the team's experience with the legislative process (me as a Congressional staffer) seeing what actually influenced how legislation was written and moved through the process -- and Members' ultimate voting decisions.

I think your point that "our reactions are almost entirely based on the interpretation of a few and signals we take from peer groups" is entirely applicable to Members of Congress. POPVOX is an attempt to give people outside of Congress the same kind of information. This includes: 1) Official information 2) Where other Members stand (co-sponsorships) 3) Positions taken by organizations 4) What constituents say

On (1), we provide links to the summaries from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), for neutral, expert summaries of what the bill actually does.

On (2), Members of Congress are just like you and me. They know that they usually agree with Members X, Y, and Z; so when considering whether to co-sponsor, they may literally ask, "Is Member X on?" It is not at all unusual for one staffer to call another office and say, "My boss is looking at H.R. 1234 but we saw you guys aren't on it, why not?". This is one place where the internal caucuses play a role. You may frequently see the House "Blue Dogs" or "New Dems" taking similar positions.

To me, the area that was most influential in Congress and most underrated outside of Congress (and within the media) was (3), the statements of endorsement or opposition of the various organizations. When a Member is considering a bill, they will always want to know, "where is X group on this" (whether that is Labor, NRA, "the doctors", the enviros, the Chamber, etc.)

This is not only because these groups bring organization and resources to the fight -- it is that they actually are watching and evaluating how various bills would affect their membership. If you are a Member of Congress who cares about the environment and tend to line up with the Sierra Club most of the time, you want to know if they see any trouble with a particular bill on dust regulation. If you got an NRA endorsement and you line up with their positions, you want to know if they see red flags on a bill involving reciprocity of carry laws across the states. Congress does not have the resources to have an expert on staff for every niche issue. There is an assumption that if a proposed bill adversely affects a certain group, that group will be watching closely enough to make their objections known. (We think lowering the barrier to entry for this kind of input is an important mission for POPVOX.)

Before POPVOX, there was no one place to go and find statements of groups supporting or opposing bills, or for smaller less plugged-in organizations to even get on the radar screen. We address this by allowing any org to create a profile and register their positions on bills. While we totally agree with you that it would be amazing to have these in concise & clear language, we understand that it is nearly impossible to do that in a neutral way. Our solution was to simply provide a platform for the information to be displayed, not to provide any content. So individuals can "see what Congress sees" and make their own decisions.

The other reason that organization statements are important is because they usually indicate the opinion of their membership, in other words: constituents (4). Though many don't believe it, it cannot be said enough: CONGRESS REALLY DOES CARE WHAT CONSTITUENTS HAVE TO SAY. (I swear, it's true. They come to meetings quoting constituents. They agonize over stories they hear. They clip newspaper editorials. Organized constituents make a difference.)

The problem is that in many cases the people asking you to sign a petition or fax or form letter or tweet or post to Facebook, etc, etc, etc, are not actually getting your message to Congress in a way that can be processed. Jake Brewer identified the problem best in this 2010 article on the "Tragedy of Political Advocacy" http://huff.to/eS1URy. POPVOX changes that, and is working with Congressional staff to deliver messages to Congress in the most effective way possible AND provide a transparent record of what Congress is actually hearing. http://bit.ly/smUl6s

On your last point (about cost info), it may be something we work in later, but at the moment, I would suggest looking at http://www.washingtonwatch.com/, which breaks down each bill with its cost estimates.

We're obviously just getting started with a long way to go and really appreciate the suggestions (here and via email at info@popvox.ocm.) Please keep them coming!

SOPA did not get any media coverage, and I'd be surprised if flippant comments made by an anonymous staffer changed that.

The way he said "censor" really made my skin crawl - it was so pompous. Gillibrand's people were nice, fyi.

I asked twice if he had spoken with any constituents over the phone who support the bill and he confirmed twice that he had not.

But still, I am not a journalist and didn't plan to blog about this except that I was so shocked by the replies I got. Surely people who work the phones at these offices must assume that everything they say could end up "on the internet"?

They're not working for you; they're working for the advertisers.

The problem is not that they want to censor things. Almost everyone agrees that some things need to be censored (e.g. publications found to be defamatory, publications of stolen trade secrets, etc.). The problem is what content they want to be able to declare illegal at little more than a whim.

Am I advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government? Nnnnnnope, just stating a point.

"First, the system technically functions based solely on votes, but these votes can be changed by gerrymandering, hacking voting machines, rigging elections, etc. Don't pretend like your vote is some assured method of sending an impulse (however small) to the system. Note also that once candidates are in office, the system responds to their whims, and in turn many whims can be affected by extortion, blackmail, bribery, corruption, or whatever else."

So let us separate out the difference between 'vote fraud' (aka the illegal manipulation of the vote) and voting legal voting changes (districts, rank-choice, open primary, etc etc).

While there are notable cases of voting fraud (the most famous perhaps being the Chicago elections) there is no evidence that such systems persist today. Conspiracy theories aside, I assume that most voting is legit in the US.

Now that leaves manipulation of the voting pool through either redistricting or voter polls manipulation (preventing undesirable voters from signing up or signing up more desirable voters). In a contest where voter turnout is < 60% and the winning margin is < 5%, getting half the people who don't vote at all to come in and vote intelligently (which is to say responsibly) will cause the correct outcome to occur.

To your second point: "Second, you assert that you still vote when the incumbent isn't working out--you just vote against them. This is wrong, because the information you want to convey--'The candidate in office is not one I want'--is now altered to something else--'I want this particular candidate in office'. You've given away the ability to say 'None of these candidates are worth a damn, give us new ones'."

The effect of eliminating the current incumbent is achieved. One of the ways people demonstrate that evolution works, rather than just a 'theory' as ID folks would suggest, is by creating a population where births and deaths are controlled by a simple fitness function, the simplest possible examples evolves to support the fitness function in a remarkably small number of generations. In our case 'death' is 'not re-elected' and birth is 'elected.' Without any other influence we can show mathematically that because candidates want to be elected the fitness function will drive them to doing what this population of voters considers a 'good job' and away from what they consider a 'bad job'.

Now you and I may not agree with a district's definition of what that is, but the system will insure that the district gets what they want.