Our Strategy

Our mission is to allow normal citizens to directly participate in every aspect of their legislative process, worldwide. Put another way, we aim to replace the republic (or "representative democracy") form of government with that of liquid democracy.

This is a grand goal, to be sure, and it will require a large number of components to work.

To get there, we start small: we bootstrap through the legal rights that citizens already have, and simply make them much more powerful and easier to use through the clever use of modern web technology.

This is our current, very rough, high-level roadmap.

We expect to deliver the first few points within the next two years. Later points are more complex, and face greater challenges, so will take significantly longer. This is a long term project, and we will need your support and participation throughout the process.

Roadmap

1. We will enable citizens to legally sign ballot propositions in their jurisdiction(s) online. We will handle the paperwork needed to get these truly voter-initiated propositions the official ballot for vote, once it has enough support that we believe it will have a shot at passing on election day.
2. We will let our users see the match between their interests and those of their representatives and other politicians who want their vote. Voters will be able to see per-issue feedback on how well they match the platform of their representatives, and politicians will be able to see per-issue feedback on how their own constituency wants them to vote.
3. We will begin setting up structure of liquid democracy, through advisor and trust relationships, proxy finding, better discussion tools, etc.
4. We will give easy access to factual context of proposals (eg financial projections; outcomes of similar previous legislation; etc), fact-check important claims and discussions, illustrate the range of political support for particular proposals, etc.
5. We will enable people to easily jointly author, discuss, and research potential legislation.
6. We will enable voters to give day to day feedback to their representatives (and their opponents) by enabling per-issue donations for or against the reelection of a politician, to pro or con advocacy organizations of ballot propositions, and tools that allow grassroots discussions to be summarized and understood by people making executive level decisions.
7. We will support the election of representatives who pledge to have their vote directly controlled by their constituents.
8. We will enable a better way of authoring, storing, and changing laws, so that people can easily know what other jurisdictions do, what changes they have made that might be desirable to copy or reject, what the legal effects of a particular change might be, etc.
9. We will create better tools to visualize, amend, and issue budgets, so that decision makers can understand what the near and long term consequences will be of a given change, and so that they can understand their choices both in larger comparative perspective and in terms of how it will affect specific people.
10. We will vote the people into gradually increasing direct power over all aspects of legislation, and relegate representatives to advisory and administrative assistants of the people, much as regulatory agencies and non-partisan legislative analyst offices currently advise and assist the legislature.