Post in community law-making, a system based on recombinant text

2007 Aug 12 14:35 UTC

I worked on a project similar to this over the past few years.  Starting in
2004, I had a site, platforms.smartcampaigns.com.  The goal was to get people
involved in the drafting and approval of the platform of the Democratic
National Party in the United States leading up to the 2004 Presidential
election.

Draft copies of the platform were posted.  People could comment on it, and find
who the members of the platform committee were, as well as the delegates where.
It was successfully used by activists to lobby for certain provisions in the
Democratic Platform.

You can see parts of this in Archive.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20040905235018/http://platform.smartcampaigns.com/

As a result of this, I got into a discussion with people in North Carolina who
wanted to present resolutions at the State Democratic Convention.  The first
draft was to use a test site that I have, http://test.smartcampaigns.com/
Anyone could submit a resolution.  They could rate the resolution, or propose
alternative texts.  It was well received, although only a small number of
people participated.  I do not know how much if affected resolutions that were
submitted to the State Convention.

The reaction was that this should be expanded.  The idea being that activists
wishing to present a resolution to one committee might could find successful
resolutions submitted to other committees.  We created Drafting Democracy,
http://www.draftingdemocracy.org

Unfortunately, this never picked up, and it is sitting out there idle.

As a technologist, I did all of this in Drupal, since I had set up a lot of
Drupal sites and it was an easy platform to build what I wanted.

I should note that the focus here was on citizens creating resolutions to go
before committees, instead of people drafting legislation.

In terms of the current legislative process in the United States, or at least
in Connecticut, I could see this working, if you could find enough people
interested in proposing legislation.  In Connecticut, I seem to recall stories
of people submitting legislation.  I don't know the logistics of it, whether
they need to get the State Representative to sign off, or what.  However, I
suspect that many State Reps would respond favorably, especially if there are a
bunch of people behind the bill.

The reason I suspect this, is also a reason I have doubts about it working.  My
wife ran for State Representative in Connecticut.  During the campaign, people
told us that 85% of the people in the United States do not know who their State
Rep is.  Based on our experience, even with people who are fairly politically
involved, that appeared to be pretty accurate.  There is a small amount of
interest in passing resolutions before some committee.  There is a much smaller
amount of interest in passing legislation.

In addition, the legalese necessary for a new law, the things that get examined
in the legislative process, such as the economic impact on the State, who it
relates to other laws, jurisdictions, etc can be considerable and might require
major modification before the proposal becomes a law, or extremely savvy
drafters of the legislation.

So, technically, it looks pretty easy.  Socially, my guess is that it will take
a lot of work.  If I were to start, I might not start with the technology, but
with getting people involved in the existing legislative process.  For each
bill going through a legislative body, it would be good to have the votes
online, as well as a place for legislatures to record why they voted the way
they did, and for constituents to join a discussion about whether they agree or
disagree with their legislators.

While big bills in the U.S. Congress may get overwhelming messages of support
or opposition, smaller bills do not, and many legislators at the State level
rarely here from their constituents.

All in all, I think it is a great idea, that should be built up to.  That's my
rant.  I would love to hear other people's thoughts.

Aldon Hynes
http://www.orient-lodge.com