When/if PeopleCount is launched, it will be in pursuit of creating accountability as the natural relationship between politicians and voters in order to alter democracy, lessen problems, and restore power to voters.
Mission and Purpose
PeopleCount's mission is
to empower people to be responsible for and create effective and accountable government. [1]
Origins and Development
Founder Rand Strauss stumbled on this in 2011, beginning with the belief that accountability is necessary, missing, and was never designed into democracies.[2]
According to Strauss,
"[b]ecause it was absent, political parties formed and then money was needed to win elections. The American political system was designed to handle neither of these. They've burdened other democracies as well - choosing a party allows a person to choose a coarse position on all issues instead of expressing choice on each issue."
Organizational Structure, Membership, and Funding
Currently PeopleCount is the sole founder's part-time project. It's also a California B-corp (for the benefit of society), but there are no employees or assets, so it's easily changed. There's no funding.
Specializations, Methods and Tools
It's been said that anything is possible when adults communicate. However, political communication often appears to be primitive, ineffective and much of it is childish (divisive). Political communication must occur between everyone, so everyone can govern together. Yet human communication systems are 1 <--> 1, 1->many, few <--> few, or few->many. Voting is the only many<-->many communication system, and it's seldom used. PeopleCount specializes in a system designed for efficient 1<-->many and many<-->many communication.
Major Projects and Events
Oct 2020: The founder is building a web app, slowly. To be kept informed, people can join a mailing list.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
1. Discovered about "accountability":
- Accountability is required for democracy to reliably work [3]
- Few people have a clear, rigorous definition of accountability [4]
- Very little accountability occurs during elections. [citation needed]
Thus accountability appears to be lacking and perceived as lacking by many Americans [5] so fixing this is necessary. Cultural myths, such as "the media provides accountability" arise as a challenge, insofar as they are misleading and act to prevent actions which could promote accountability from being taken.
Finally, a rigorous functional definition shows how an internet-based communication system could restore political accountability, rejuvenating democracy and empowering citizens to govern themselves effectively.
In Toni G.L.A. van der Meer, Dave Gelders and Sabine Rotthier's exploratory study on e-Democracy, they conclude that "governments predominantly utilize the Web to disseminate information. They seem to lack responsiveness, openness, and interactivity, indicating one-way communication or simple interaction despite the Web-based opportunities to facilitate active two-way communication. Since dialogue is characterized as two-way communication beyond simple interaction, one may conclude that governments do not utilize e-Government to its fullest potential in terms of facilitating and utilizing all dialogue possibilities."[6]
2. People often find it difficult to understand anything new
Our cultural myths about politics are many and strong. If a solution doesn't fit into the status quo, it is often difficult for people to understand or accept it. Instead, they may substitute similar ideas they already know, or dismiss it all when it doesn't add up.
3. People often believe they can understand something new in a few minutes.
PeopleCount's founder has suggested that,"if an idea can't be understood in a few minutes, it has a lesser chance of being adopted, funded, supported. Western culture holds that it's ludicrous to not have a compelling elevator pitch. This is especially true of professional investors and academics who assume their notion of being "smart" means they'll quickly understand a new paradigm. People believe it's others' responsibility to be convincing and inspiring, not their own responsibility to understand."
Publications
http://bit.ly/peoplecount-guide
See Also
References
[1] People Count.org. What is PeopleCount.org. Accessed 10/30/2020, http://peoplecount.org/about.htm
[2] Strauss, R. (2015, Dec 1). What happened that I Tackled Politics? People Count.org. https://blog.peoplecount.org/rand/happened-tackled-politics/
[3] Warren, M. (2014). Chapter 3: Accountability and Democracy. In M. Bovens, R. E. Goodin, & T. Schillemans (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability, Oxford University Press. https://books.google.ca/books...
[4] Schedler, A. (1999). Conceptualizing Accountability. In A. Schedler, L. J. Diamond, M. F. Plattner (Eds.), The Self-restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies, p. 13, https://books.google.ca/books...
[5] Pew Research Center (2019, July 22). Americans’ struggles with truth, accuracy and accountability, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/americans-struggles-with-truth-accuracy-and-accountability/
[6] e-Democracy: Exploring the Current Stage of e-Government
van der Meer, T. G.L.A., Gelders, D. and Rotthier, S. (2014). e-Democracy: Exploring the Current Stage of e-Government. Journal of Information Policy, 4, 489-506. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.4.2014.0489#metadata_info_tab_contents