Countable Wants To Make Politics A 'Continual Conversation'

techcrunch.com

11 points·lylemckeany··2 comments

Cat did a nice job of summarizing what we're up to with our new iOS app.

The app is designed to make keeping track of your representatives in government easy. Short summaries of bills, an easy way to up/down vote them and tell your Reps how to vote, and then a simple way to hold your reps accountable.

I'm eager to hear HN's feedback - let us know what you think.

This is my personal view and it may not be popular but...I think any service that reduces legislation to a summary and asks for an upvote/downvote is doing a disservice to all but those who would only get superficially involved anyway. It's not a thumbs up/thumbs down situation. We should have line-item outrage and still suggest the death of the whole bill ONLY if alternative language can't work.

The outrage over CISPA for example was not outrage over a 100% bad piece of legislation. Pieces of it were horrible to be sure. Services should be about picking out the bad from the pile, holding up the good, and educating users on the differences and suggesting alternative language. One bad line can corrupt a significant piece of longer legislation. Would you suggest people should only be able to choose good or bad to label it? You might say it's 99% good or that it's wholly ruined by the 1%.

Full disclosure: I'm working on a legal edtech startup and I proposed something similar a while back called GenAssem

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