OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm Ideas

Library of Congress THOMAS site: http://thomas.loc.gov/

http://www.opencongress.org/

This seems logical, and yet bills with sweeping consequences, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of pages, are printed when there is no time for anyone to read the bill, let alone intelligently consider it, before voting. Constitution-bending pieces of legislation have been bullied into passage with a lot of noise about how we can't wait to pass it, even though we have to live with the consequences for years after... more »

So we know that our elected officials do their best to ignore and trample on what the people of this country want like, oh, peace, health care, and so on. My idea is that we need a 4th branch of government aka The People. It would work like this: All legislation would be made available to the public online together with the pros and cons for a minimum of 2 months and the public would be able to vote on it during this... more »

There needs to be a process whereby the public can initiate a process to introduce popular legislation with legal input on Constitutional issues. One option would be to create a site for each registered voter to sign in, be verified and get a numbered account. At that site, somewhat similar to this one, new legislation could be proposed that would also be sent to their Congressional representatives, and then voted on... more »