To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
New Voter Tools for Truer Representation
We are asking Congress to mandate the creation of this website voting tool to help our representative government become better at representing and responding to the American people.
Each voter needs access to at least three websites--one for each of these: national issues , state issues , and local issues. Each website should be run by a non-government, non-profit, non-partisan facilitating group sworn to assist the voter’s voices. Members of the registered voting public will have a particular password identity (obtained as part of their voter registration process). With the password, registered voters will have access to the website tools so they can vote on issues, as well as submit their own issue of preference on the website.
If a citizen decides to submit their issue to the website, they will have a limited time to gather enough support to remain on that website. Once the issue is “on the table” it will remain for a limited period of time, allowing the broader public a chance to vote on the issue. Each website can reveal the cumulative votes, similar to a poll, but it will be much more accurate-- because it is tallying the vote of registered voters only. The websites can also sort the votes according to their district and the representatives and/or government agencies that the vote must be sent to, revealing the support levels within each city, or district, or state directly to the public.
A website like this will reveal when there is a bipartisan or even a nonpartisan issue that deserves the support and attention of our representatives. It will also simplify the voter’s participation process, a public tool like this should help the public begin to have more power over setting the issues that our representatives handle, and how they handle them.
Please mandate the creation of this tool for a more perfect democracy in which the public is not kept in the dark, but in which the public has a chance to gain a more respected, effective, and active role in this democracy. Congress, it is time you allow us to grow up.
Why is this important?
One of the ways we voters have been kept in a democracy of limited effectiveness, is by keeping us blind to the true amount of public support towards any given issue. The first thing we need to do is find a way to remove the blindfold and make our government representatives and agencies face a public that can see issues in which the public vision is widely shared and when the public’s shared vision is or is not being represented. Polls are not good enough. Accuracy of polls can be questioned for many reasons. We need more than polling. We need a public way of submitting registered issue votes to the government and its agencies. Something that is much better than individuals calling, writing, and even meeting with representatives and public officials.