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Crowd-sourced political lobby

wethelobby.com

106 points_wp3r39 comments

Why is a representative going to listen to our lobbyist over the MPAA's lobbyist? We can raise enough money to hire someone to work in Washington for us, but I somehow doubt we can consistently raise enough money to make matching campaign contributions so that our lobbyist is taken seriously. Even if we could, it feels fundamentally wrong that we need a self-imposed tax on citizens for their representatives to represent them. Attacking the incentive structure of the system by not having campaigns financed by corporations and interest groups is probably a better place to invest our effort.

While I'll agree there is something absurd to the idea of citizens paying for the attention of congress, it's also a recognition of how our system currently - and unfortunately - works. Lobbying firms are congress' sole source of education on subjects they often aren't knowledgeable on, such as the internet and piracy.

I'll also agree that serious campaign finance reform needs to happen. That's why We The Lobby is also raising money to support Bernie Sander's proposed amendment (S.J.Res.33) which prohibits corporate spending in all elections, essentially reverses Citizens United, and more. Check it out -> http://www.wethelobby.com/causes/2

>Attacking the incentive structure of the system by not having campaigns financed by corporations and interest groups is probably a better place to invest our effort.

Is it possible to attack an incentive structure so firmly ingrained in to our system? There's always some form of duplicity between governments and their people so I wouldn't expect a way to 100% defeat a poor incentive system. I think crowdsourcing is a good way to compete with big-time corporate lobbyists, not to mention it fits well with the whole "democratic" model politicians act like they support.

http://rootstrikers.org/

This group seems a little conventional but is focused on the funding issue.

I think the idea should be to put complete force behind passing some legislation which in a meaningful way restricts the influence corporations can have over congress.

We The Lobby's main idea thus far is to rally for lobbying money while legislation is being discussed in the House or Senate - just like SOPA / PIPA are being discussed now after the vote has been cancelled.

If someone puts out legislation illustrating what you said, and there is enough popular opinion behind it, we will try and list it on our site.

I'd also encourage you to check out the second cause currently listen on We The Lobby, entitled "Corporations are not people." It is in support of S.J.Res.33, a proposed Amendment by Bernie Sanders which contains verbiage to restrict corporation's influence on congress via campaign donations. Check it out and make a pledge! http://www.wethelobby.com/causes/2

In France we have a lobby fighting for internet freedom, La Quadrature du Net: http://www.laquadrature.net/

The lobby is only three people, and was started by one guy on his own. He pays himself with donations.

And yet he's been very efficient: almost all newspaper stories on the subject quote him. Also, more and more French politicians understand the electoral weight of the issues, and less and less support restrictive laws such as Hadopi.

I don't see why you couldn't have the same in the states.

We do have similar groups, the EFF is one of the bigger ones. However, they have to compete with the millions of dollars the American recording & media industries have.

It's great to hear La Quadrature du Net does well with so little. We're sure We The Lobby cannot match special interests in terms of money, but we are hoping the causes can resonate given the donations represent the actual voting constituency.

Hey everyone. I'm actually the founder & lead developer of We The Lobby. I just got home and saw this hit HN.

I was planning on (and still may) posting the site asking for everyone's thoughts but... while I'm here if anyone has any suggestions, comments, questions, whatever - I'll respond right now.

"Your funds will be contributed to have a lobbying group talk to Congress."

That's a pretty vague commitment. Why should I believe the money will be used effectively? What makes this a better use of my funds than writing a check to the EFF?

Great question. We're waiting until we can confirm which group we will partner with on any given cause.

And in the case of organizations, we are looking into partnering with advocacy groups such as the EFF as well as traditional lobbying firms.

Once we know who we are partnering with, we can and intend to be fully transparent about how the money is being used. Stay tuned to the site for updates on this!

Sorry for stealing any thunder.

Thought the idea was worth sharing, so I did.

I think it's better this way. :)

Thanks for sharing!

OK guys - it's late on the east coast and I need to sleep. I'll be up in a few hours to see if anyone else has commented with a question!

Interesting concept. I've actually always envisioned a method of having a representative government that is actually representative of it's constituents by use of social networking and technology (making it easier to communicate ideas, values and put the results together to bring to the floor). Since we're not near a world that will accept that type of system as those in power are not those leading in the technology and communication revolution, having a method that bridges the old way and a future way isn't a bad idea.

With that said, I think there are some pitfalls that will need to be addressed. The idea of getting a lobbying group and using them to represent those funding a program gives me the feeling that there's a good chance that many actions won't go further than a first round. The money goes in, it gets a lobbyist group up and going and then.....what? It takes on going funding to fight for legislation, I think the model has to work in a manner that is closer to subscriptions so that it can be pushed for to an end.

Which brings me to point 2. if you're going to go to a subscription based model, there has to be information shared to everyone, not just those willing to pledge the upper limits. If you're creating a group to fight for a cause then they need to continually be updated on said cause and given the chance to help further. Otherwise we run into point 1. Additionally, shouldn't the sharing of information be part of this goal? Why is it that only those that can pay the upper amounts get to hear back?

I think ideally what happens is a team works behind the scenes on this project to review cases, put together the information and once a project reaches the 'open the case level', a subsite is setup for the cause, donors are placed on a mailing list, and the lobbyist group is searched for. A project plan is then put in place to estimate costs and effort so that on going funds can be added to help.

Additionally, since lobbyists without any actual ties beyond a pay check aren't really fighting for a cause, individuals funding the group are put in place to help head the 'project'. This means reviews, putting together updates, and helping with decision making.

In the end, the ability for a program like this to raise capital time and time over is only going to be by showing successful efforts. I think that in it's current form it doesn't have the ability to maintain a fight to that level of success- but I think that with some modifications it could.

Interested in seeing how this develops.

We 100% agree that we need to have continual funding, and that this will not be feasible without transparency and updating our pledgers. Before we can define these things, we are waiting for one thing: To confirm a partnership with another group to fund a cause.

Once we can confirm whom we are funneling donations to, we will have an agreement in place with that group as to how we can be transparent and communicative to everyone involved. To some level, everyone that pledges will receive updates and information as to how their money is being spent.

That is to say information will be available to ALL pledgers, not just the upper levels. The upper level pledgers, however, will receive more frequent updates and some amount of input themselves.

We need to get better about communicating this on the site.

As for continual funding, we are looking into a model which funds in rounds, as you alluded to. But, again, we are waiting to meet our goal and confirm a partnership before we enter that realm.

We're extremely excited to see where this goes, and if you have any other thoughts please reach out to us! Our contact info's on the site.

Well don't forget to add some serious revolving doors, as a motivation for the lawmakers (http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/), because, you know, they already got that. Secondly, but even more importantly, don't forget to set aside a large chunk of the cash to hire an army of assassins and mercenaries, because, you know, anybody of any importance is already under a death threat if they step out their line, and you are fool if you think otherwise. I seriously, seriously, seriously suggest reading through all the 5 pages of this, no matter how "stock conspiracy theory" it may look to you, just effin do it (allocate half a day, it's a long read), and bitch later, because you really need to know: http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1023-financia...

We're aware of the revolving door concept, and if we gain traction on a few issues and are about to provide continual funding with them - it's definitely a concept we are looking into exploiting.

As for the death threats - 0 so far, but it's been 6 days since launching. If I get shot I'm looking at you to cry foul!

Get rid of the indirection. Hiring lobbyist isn't necessary.

Instead, a two step system would be nice:

1. People add money to pool. The pool's contents are publicized.

2. After congressional votes, the pool is distributed to all politicians who voted "correctly".

Note that this incentivizes politicians to oppose the status quo, as the less politicians supporting a piece of legislation, the higher the payout.

Would that be legal? It sounds like outright corruption...

Not much different from how it operates now.

Just ask Dodd.

This is an interesting idea, but for it to work, I'd add one more stipulation:

3. Have politicians sign an agreement that accepting money from We The Lobby's pool means you cannot accept money from other donors.

This would ensure that special interests had no more power than the majority of a democracy's population - as they do now.

But I seriously doubt any politician would agree with this.

Is there an opportunity for a data driven approach to politics?

I would be interested in a service that segmented people into large groups based on their political ideas. A cross between a semi-anonymous Facebook, groups and politics, none of the social networky stuff, just ideas, viewpoints, groups and votes.

For example, you might belong to a very large simple 'liberal' group, with vague and general ideas. Within this group, you'd have factions with more specific ideas and options. It may drill down to situations like: "You are a member of group liberal-software-developers (xxx,xxx members), group members strongly support ..., generally support ..., generally oppose ..., no strong opinion about about ...". Eventually you might find a group you nearly always agree with.

With enough support across the population, it would make it easy for everyone, including politicians to see how everyone felt on various topics.

To make this work, you'd need to put topics to people (in a fair way, with proper presentation of each viewpoint) and do some polling. It would then be interesting to see the correlation between groups you are in, and your viewpoint.

You could then pivot the data based on categories and any number of dimensions to see what people are thinking.

Some other usecase ideas: "I'm a member of liberal-software-developers, I generally agree with this group's viewpoint. I'll trust viewpoints from group members who are better informed on topic Z, rather than some TV commercial."

"My group doesn't have a strong opinion on some healthcare thing, I'll trust liberal-doctors instead..."

As a step for the original question, perhaps conduct a fair nationwide poll on each contested topic? You could ask 1000 people what they thought of each topic in a credible fashion. The result then gives media organisations some content to work with and read out. If public support is overwhelming for each topic, then it may become difficult to ignore the polling data.

I'd encourage you to look into www.popvox.com and www.votizen.com - they are not exactly the idea you've talked about but are similar in vein of organizing data to present to congress.

However, the problem is getting congress to recognize these systems are better. Currently, lobbying groups do the education of topics, and donate to campaigns of candidates. This system needs to be changed first, and We The Lobby believes a fundamental positive change would be to alter where the money comes from; and thus whose influence (special interests vs. the general population) is being made on Congress.

As a non-american, it's a cultural mind-blow to think that you guys need to pay your guys-in-charge so they do their jobs properly.

Trust me, we aren't very keen on it, either.

It is really disturbing that you need to pay to get access to your own government. The greatest trick the Lobbyists ever pulled was replacing "corruption" with "lobbying" in the dictionary.

its not just the pigs in animal farm that turned into the wicked rulers they ousted so justly; on many levels it is every group that ever successfully revolted. one of the earliest steps into the dark is using the tactics of the enemy.

no doubt there are successful lobbies that havent made the deals that render them useless. but playing the game is not the tactic that is working and inspiring people anymore; it is the hope of something more transcending emerging from new networks we build and connect with every day.

i hope this is not the case here but the prospect of getting a few minutes to talk in between a pig's meals isn't so appetizing.

We The Lobby feel that characterizing Lobbyists as pigs, or Lobbying as essentially evil, is foolish at best.

At this point, it simply is what it is.

It's not what lobbyists do that make you call them pigs - it's the fact that they are eating from the troughs of corporations.

Let's we the people feed them individually so they'll fight for us instead. Maybe then, one day, we can do something about the troughs.

Can crowd sourced lobbying compete against the deep pockets of corporate interests? That's my biggest concern.

I like this idea a lot though. Hopefully it gains traction.

Can it compete? Let's find out.

Let's find out indeed!

Make a pledge guys!

Sorry for the overt plug. Figured I should do it at least once though :)

I wonder if they plan to take a percentage of the funds raised. I can see this being problematic.

I think it's reasonable to say WeTheLobby needs to keep the lights on. I think I'd feel a lot better providing ongoing contributions if I knew WeTheLobby were a NonProfit and either publicly disclosed all management salaries or had a salary cap.

Anyone here from WeTheLobby willing to chime in?

I was just about to go to sleep, but this is an important question.

We want to spend as much money as we can on lobbying efforts. The site itself was made completely pro bono because we all believe in the idea.

We are committed to being as financially transparent as possible. Right now our only costs are for hosting and setting up the site; a little under $100 to date. As things progress we will disclose the information on the "money" page.

As for operational costs, we've toyed with the idea of having a separate donations page to fund the site; keeping the money pledged for lobbying separate. There is also the more obvious method of taking a percentage.

Again, once decisions are made, we will fully disclose these changes. But as stated earlier we are committed to ensuring as much money as possible is spent on lobbying related to the cause.

Thank you for the reply. I felt it was important to address so that myself and others would be more confident with going ahead and pledging.

Thanks for taking the lead here and actually shipping something.

Seperate pages would definitely be the best in regards to transparency.

Definitely. Once we do some serious accounting we'll know best how to divy up the data information architecture-wise.

I know you guys are in startup mode, but I hope you have retained a lawyer to advise and, if necessary, defend you. Lobbying is highly regulated and violations can result in federal prosecution. Just by paying a lobbying firm you will have to register with various federal agencies and report on the activities you fund.

Thanks for the warning, and yes, we are in talks with several tax lawyers about how best to handle this.

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