Lessig Bets On the Net To Clean Up Government

christian.einfeldt writes "Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig really 'gets it' when it comes to the efficacy of distributed open source code production. Now he is attempting to use distributed production methods to expose corruption in the US Congress with the launch of another 'CC' organization — this time it's called 'Change Congress'. CC (as opposed to cc for Creative Commons) would invite users to track whether US legislators are willing to commit to Change Congress' four pledges. CC will rely on users to record and map the positions of candidates who are running for open seats in the US House and Senate. Change Congress will use a Google mash-up to create a map depicting which legislators have taken the CC pledge, which have declined, and which have signaled support for planks in the Change-Congress platform. The four pledges (which are not numbered 0 through 3) call for greater transparency in government, and less influence of private money in shaping legislation."

Re:Naive

[7311587]

An extension might be useful for causing elected politicians to have desired behaviour. The problem is when a politician wants votes before they are elected you can influence them but after they are elected then they are influenced by others. You need to maintain the before election influence after they are elected. Creating a contract that the politician signs before they are elected is good. This contract will constrain their behaviour. If they violate the contract then the contract becomes their official unrevokable resignation from office. During the election you can then advertise which politicians have signed which contracts. After the election if they violate they contract they are out and people can vote again. Politicians have different behaviour before they are elected than after so getting weaker politicians to sign on might cause the more senior ones to sign on if they have too in order to compete.

Re:Naive

[darjen]

I don't think the public cares much about what their politicians do. There must be a reason most congressmen are re-elected. They could be completely transparent in everything they do and still not be held accountable for their actions by the voters. This is because the public operates under the assumption that the government generally takes care of things people normally don't want to do. Yet, the same problems of human nature continue to occur year after year. The best we can hope for is that people begin to realize that this isn't the case, and stop depending on the government to take care of them.

Use the 'net to draft legislation with wiki's

[gethoht]

Let's use the net to draft legislation as well! Senator Chris Romer of CO has proposed the idea of using a wiki as a way to have the people input their ideas into legislation:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/29/skiers-might-get-become-citizen-lawmakers/ [rockymountainnews.com]

I think it's a great idea. To me it's one of the greatest ideas for implementing true democracy that I've ever seen.

Re:Hopeful

[TheRaven64]

I had a simpler idea. Before the election, each candidate should fill in a 20-question multiple-choice exam about their policies. At the polling station, the voter has to fill in the same test. If the voter's opinions do not correlate with those of the candidate to a certain percentage, their vote should be ignored. An astonishing number of people vote for candidates who believe the opposite of what they do because their parents voted for that party, or they believed in that party's ideals a few decades ago when it still had some.

There would be nothing stopping a candidate from publishing their answers on flyers that voters could take into the polling station and copy, but at least it would encourage them to actually know what the candidate believes in. And then you'd have a legal, public record that could be compared against their track record at the next election.

Transparency is the best solution of the 4 pledges

[zuikaku]

1. No money from lobbyists or PACs
      While we like to think of politicians as corrupt, money-grubbing jerks who'll take money from any lobbyist in order to stay in office, the truth is that most politicians already believe in certain causes and will gladly take money from their allies in those causes. The NRA is not likely to change the mind of an anti-gun senator with promises of money. That senator is likely getting money from an anti-gun group already, since that group's aims match his own. Perhaps this would be less true of corporate lobbying, but transparency could help alleviate this by letting voters see who a politicians allies are. If a politician were known to be taking Archer-Daniels money, and that politician then voted for more ethanol subsidies, I might be less likely to vote for him next time. Long story short, I don't think there is much quid-pro-quo going on, it's more an aligning of interests between pols and PACs. This is not to mention the potential freedom of speech issues of banning lobbying. After all, everyone has the right to petition the government.

2. Vote to end earmarks
      This is kind of like laws against profanity - "I know it when I hear it". One man's earmark is another's worthy cause. It would be ideal if we could prevent earmarks, but defining exactly what an earmark is in such a way as to make it difficult or impossible to pass another earmark without also impacting useful legislation is practically impossible. English is a rich language that lets you say one thing and mean another in some cases, and politicians are especially adept at using the language to get what they want. Transparency is the best choice here as well, since the only sure way for "obvious" earmarks to be stopped is if the people are aware that they have been attached to unrelated bills or perverted the intentions of related bills.

3. Support publicly-financed campaigns
      To me, this is the worst of all the pledges. Why should we have political welfare for people running for office? Do we really want our tax dollars spent so that some candidates can have an election allegedly free of special interests? Remember, he who controls the gold makes the rules, so public financing could be perverted into an institution that funds only "worthy" candidates, with "worthy" defined by whomever is currently in power. Even with the currently limited system for Presidential candidates, the candidates have to raise a certain amount of money and be subject to other restrictions that they find onerous. This is one reason why many of the present candidates did not accept public funding - it got in the way of raising the real sums they needed to win.

4. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency
      This is one pledge I can get behind, but the devil is in the implementation. Every donation to every candidate would need to be disclosed, preferably on the web, and there would need to be dire consequences if anyone was caught trying to hide a donation or the source of a donation. Every bill, including amendments and votes, would need to be available as well. All meetings would need to be open, meaning that the press (at the least) is invited and minutes are taken and made available on-line (with reasonable exceptions for things like national security issues and maybe a few others - of course, this can be perverted as well). There are numerous documents that the government has erroneously (or illegally, if it was to CYA) classified as secret which would need to be declassified, and better oversight for what can be classified should be put into place (perhaps this is a bit beyond the scope of Congress itself). Some of these things already exist, to some degree.

Re:Naive

[johnlcallaway]

One cannot assume that all knowledgeable people think PAC money is bad, and that public financing of elections will have any impact.

I don't agree with either stand. PAC money means no Sierra Club as well as no Exxon. Lobbyists, in all of their forms, can do a much better job at 'educating' politicians than the average person can, I would rather have one knowledgable person, but biased, from the Sierra Club and one from Exxon talking to my congressman than thousands of consituents whose knowledge ranges from expert to 'I heard from my neighbor'. Just because someone doesn't believe in a particular viewpoint doesn't make it invalid. We all have different value systems, and this country was founded on our right to disagree with each other. If PACs are eliminated, they will be replaced by something else. There is nothing that stops Exxon executives from getting together as a group, and deciding amongst themselves who to donate to. The same goes for Sierra Club members.

Public financing of elections won't help, politicians will still muck rake just like they have for the entire history of this country and you still won't know what any politician's stand really is (plus, I think it would be unconstituional, that free speech thing works both ways). Ron Paul proved that the amount of money you raise has very little to do with being able to win an election. Or how good you would be as a politician (I think he would be horrendous, but just my opinion.)

Politics, whether it is your local club or the US Senate, doesn't change because the same people will still be running for office. Find a way to get someone who can really examine issues and make decisions to run.

I don't have that answer. And from what I've seen of world politics in general, no one else does either.