OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Why vote if you are not aware of what your voting for?

Politicians must sign an affidavit asserting they have read and understand the legislation.

This is absolute must! Any politician unwilling to sign an affidavit must not be allowed to vote.

If they don't have the time to read and fully understand the legislation you have to question why they are a politician in the first place.

An affidavit is basic, what would really get some accountability is requiring a basic comprehension test be passed before they could vote. Even better would be a discussion with constitutuents on the pros and cons of the bill.

Why not just have voters do the voting directly? It's possible with the present state of technology. Obviously the system of having representatives doesn't work or it wouldn't have gotten so corrupted and unaccountable to the needs of the average person.

This is seems so obvious to me it is almost painful. Probably the best way to make help this happen is eliminate all the pork to make them easier to read as well. Then we'd kill 2 birds with one stone-- no more pork, and legislators actually READING the bills they are imposing on us.

So they sign an affidavit saying they read it. That does not make it so. Do they even know how to read?

Back when I was in college, we used to have to write "Reading Journals." I had some friends who were convinced the professors never read them, so they would put in the middle of them things like, "I bet you aren't even reading this." And you know what, nobody ever noticed!

Maybe we should make them put things like that in bills in the congress. They only get to vote once they find all five and cite where they are located! LOL (A little tongue in cheek here)