Startup idea: a weekly email newsletter containing a list of bills your representatives in congress voted on (or introduced/co-sponsored), along with some "like" and "dislike" buttons. Home page maintains a prominent list of representatives most "disliked" by their constituents.
This whole SOPA debacle has convinced me more than ever that the feedback loop between constituents and representatives is absolutely terrible. This would be an attempt to solve the problem (via public humiliation).
H.R.3997 - Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2007
To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes.
How many people getting the newsletter would actually realize that "other purposes" refers to a $700 billion bank bailout? (This is the bill the Republicans killed, shortly before caving in and passing another bill a week later.)
In the state of Washington, it's actually unconstitutional for any state bill, referendum, or voter initiative to have more than one topic. Our state courts have thrown out laws for this reason.
Having started someone along these lines, you would need a human element in between the raw data and the emails, translating each bill's name and purpose into human-speak. They are so shrouded in legalese that it's extraordinarily difficult to parse out the intent of many of them, and "bad" parts seem to be very difficult to locate at a casual glance. Even reading over the text of SOPA, it isn't immediately obvious to the layperson why it's a bad bill. The way it reads obscures the truly odious parts of the bill. Were it not for analysis and coverage done by third parties, you and I would probably read SOPA and say "Yup, that's a good idea, upvote".
You'd need a full-time staff of lawyers translating this stuff for the rest of us to make something like that worthwhile/
This is a pretty important point. I doubt more than 10,000 people in the U.S. read PIPA and SOPA in their entirety (only a handful of congressmen/women are included in the 10,000)
Our reactions to proposed legislation are almost entirely based on the interpretation of a few and signals we take from peer groups.
I'd like to see a great summary of every legislation with the following info in VERY CLEAR and concise language:
- factual account of what the proposed legislation does/enables
- who will love the bill
- who will hate the bill
- how much will this bill cost taxpayers per year when implemented
If we had those 4 points easily accessible for every piece of legislation, it would be a positive thing for our democracy.
In Australia, you'd just need to include the long title. From the Australian drafting procedures (instructions given to Federal lawyers who make sure the politicians haven't made a mess of the legislation):
"the drafting of the long title is very important as the long title must encompass all the matters included in the Bill. If there are matters that are not covered by the long title, the Bill may need to be withdrawn from Parliament and then reintroduced. "
A title like "Patriot Act" would be thrown out.
You could appoint drafters to do it, but I guess Americans trust politicians more than the government.
If you want politicians to do it, you could give the "Ayes" 50 words, and the "Nays" 40 words. If they really can't agree on words, you could give every member a word, and if they get together with 6 other people they agree with they can put in a seven word sentence (for or against the bill). If a majority are in favor of a bill, and the minority against it can't think of anything really wrong with it, then it's either a good bill or you need either a new democratic system or a tin-foil hat.
"Patriot Act" is the so-called "popular" title. The "official title" is "To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes."
If I had to guess, "and for other purposes" is basically a catch-all for anything not explicitly named.
It's still nothing like what an Australian law could be called. In Australia, it would be something like "Amendments to Homeland Security Act". Australia doesn't have the emotive (and misleading) titles the US does, because our legislative framework deters it.
Sounds quite reasonable to me. I do wish we had something in US law, as well. Every time a politician introduces a bill with a loaded name, it makes me want to retch.
PopVox has an “organisations endorsing” / “organisations opposing” section. It's not as gameable as finnw suggests, except for some misrepresentation: the “US Chamber of Commerce” is a large, extremely right wing lobby, some industry groups don't exactly represent their constituents; call it a start.
Whether this will work depends on who writes each of these sections.
For example if you ask the sponsors of the bill "who will hate the bill" they will always say "terrorists", so the field will not actually tell you anything and will quickly become useless.
Sounds like the should then be sacked automatically for fraud against the electorate and their position come up for re-election (with them excluded for a term).
I've been idly thinking about making a website that does precisely this. It would take a wide variety of expertise and a LOT of manpower to pull off, though. It would be great to tie this to politicians' voting records as well.
Thanks for the post, Dev (and for alerting the POPVOX team.) Also, thanks for the links to POPVOX, Tobu.
As Tobu mentioned, POPVOX is a starting place for some of what you describe. The simple origin was the team's experience with the legislative process (me as a Congressional staffer) seeing what actually influenced how legislation was written and moved through the process -- and Members' ultimate voting decisions.
I think your point that "our reactions are almost entirely based on the interpretation of a few and signals we take from peer groups" is entirely applicable to Members of Congress. POPVOX is an attempt to give people outside of Congress the same kind of information. This includes:
1) Official information
2) Where other Members stand (co-sponsorships)
3) Positions taken by organizations
4) What constituents say
On (1), we provide links to the summaries from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), for neutral, expert summaries of what the bill actually does.
On (2), Members of Congress are just like you and me. They know that they usually agree with Members X, Y, and Z; so when considering whether to co-sponsor, they may literally ask, "Is Member X on?" It is not at all unusual for one staffer to call another office and say, "My boss is looking at H.R. 1234 but we saw you guys aren't on it, why not?". This is one place where the internal caucuses play a role. You may frequently see the House "Blue Dogs" or "New Dems" taking similar positions.
To me, the area that was most influential in Congress and most underrated outside of Congress (and within the media) was (3), the statements of endorsement or opposition of the various organizations. When a Member is considering a bill, they will always want to know, "where is X group on this" (whether that is Labor, NRA, "the doctors", the enviros, the Chamber, etc.)
This is not only because these groups bring organization and resources to the fight -- it is that they actually are watching and evaluating how various bills would affect their membership. If you are a Member of Congress who cares about the environment and tend to line up with the Sierra Club most of the time, you want to know if they see any trouble with a particular bill on dust regulation. If you got an NRA endorsement and you line up with their positions, you want to know if they see red flags on a bill involving reciprocity of carry laws across the states. Congress does not have the resources to have an expert on staff for every niche issue. There is an assumption that if a proposed bill adversely affects a certain group, that group will be watching closely enough to make their objections known. (We think lowering the barrier to entry for this kind of input is an important mission for POPVOX.)
Before POPVOX, there was no one place to go and find statements of groups supporting or opposing bills, or for smaller less plugged-in organizations to even get on the radar screen. We address this by allowing any org to create a profile and register their positions on bills. While we totally agree with you that it would be amazing to have these in concise & clear language, we understand that it is nearly impossible to do that in a neutral way. Our solution was to simply provide a platform for the information to be displayed, not to provide any content. So individuals can "see what Congress sees" and make their own decisions.
The other reason that organization statements are important is because they usually indicate the opinion of their membership, in other words: constituents (4). Though many don't believe it, it cannot be said enough: CONGRESS REALLY DOES CARE WHAT CONSTITUENTS HAVE TO SAY. (I swear, it's true. They come to meetings quoting constituents. They agonize over stories they hear. They clip newspaper editorials. Organized constituents make a difference.)
The problem is that in many cases the people asking you to sign a petition or fax or form letter or tweet or post to Facebook, etc, etc, etc, are not actually getting your message to Congress in a way that can be processed. Jake Brewer identified the problem best in this 2010 article on the "Tragedy of Political Advocacy" http://huff.to/eS1URy. POPVOX changes that, and is working with Congressional staff to deliver messages to Congress in the most effective way possible AND provide a transparent record of what Congress is actually hearing. http://bit.ly/smUl6s
On your last point (about cost info), it may be something we work in later, but at the moment, I would suggest looking at http://www.washingtonwatch.com/, which breaks down each bill with its cost estimates.
We're obviously just getting started with a long way to go and really appreciate the suggestions (here and via email at info@popvox.ocm.) Please keep them coming!
Brewer's article was really useful for putting into context the problem with communicating to congress. I've never contacted Congress as I presume my input will have no meaningful impact. I think what you're working on with PopVox could change this reality by organizing citizen input & communication.
Another idea I've had is to implement something like the White House petitions for Congress with the response threshold scaled to the size of the congressional district/state. So you might need 500 votes to get a formal written response on an issue in Rhode Island, but 1,500 votes to get a formal response in California.
Another idea is to have a system to have voters elect citizen spokespersons on each issue (users vote up good commenters). If an issue becomes popular the Congress member would engage in a live video discussion with this citizen spokesperson(s). This would have a bigger audience than most townhall meeting where only a few hundred people at most can fit into a room. Instead, thousands of people would be able to watch these online discussions.
Your team's doing some great work. I hope to hear more in the coming weeks/months!
PopVox looks like it has the potential to become a fantastic site. But there is one glaring problem with it, there's too much noise -- bills for which the status is something like:
"This bill or resolution was assigned to a congressional committee on May 5, 2011, which will consider it before possibly sending it on to the House or Senate as a whole. The majority of bills never make it past this point."
If the majority of bills never make it past this point, it really should not belong on PopVox at all -- or maybe on some separate page that you can opt in to seeing (not simply opt out).
You have to realize that most people that visit your site will not have infinite time on their hands to browse through bills that will probably never even make it past the committee stage.
Focus your effort on those bills that have made it out of committee, and it will cut out the majority of noise on your site and make your site a hundred times more useful.
Gamification! Add a "wtf?" or "what does it mean?" option. Clicks on this would create/increase a community bounty on an objective, concise summary of the bill's impact.
Actually, many law firms publish this kind of content on their own sites all the time. You could probably arrange to aggregate their content if you properly attribute it.
If you have any sample links, I would be extremely grateful. I got two days into the project and realized that even if I could get this data to people, they wouldn't be able to understand it. Any remedy to that would be massively appreciated.
It's both very interesting, and quite depressing because I live in such a safe seat that the guy has never even bothered to visit our town right before election time, so I doubt he gives a damn about what constituents think the rest of the time.
govtrack.us and it's sister site popvox.com. On govtrack I have trackers set up for my senators and the representative from my district, some general trackers, and some trackers for specific bills. I get a daily update (but weekly is an option) of activity related to my trackers. Popvox lets you approve/disapprove of bills.
I was going to sign up for Megavote but it only lets you track 5 issues from a list of talking points including "Civil Rights"?
edit: I didn't mean to be insensitive. minority rights including gay marriage and women's rights are defiantly important and heavily debated civil rights issues. The blanket term "Civil Rights" just dosen't seem to be used to describe those issues very often these days.
At the state level, there's been a rash of legislation the last 2 years that's putatively aimed at curbing "voter fraud", but has the practical effect of disenfranchising black people and college kids.
On the other hand, consider voter fraud cases like this [1][2].
I'm not in favor of putting too many burdens on the right to vote, and I'm honestly not sure where the balance lies: it's not clear how much fraud does occur, and it's not clear to me how much people are burdened by laws requiring ID (I suspect both are edge cases, but how do they compare in magnitude; what about the risk presented by each?). I just think it's necessary to keep in mind that there really is another side to the story.
It seems like there's more republican state legislatures trying to pass voter fraud laws than there are actual documented cases of voter fraud in the last 2 years. That's a hell of a statistic.
You know, it would seem that that sector gets a whole lot of coverage while much more egregious and dangerous threats to liberty are happening.
It's unfortunate, because such things make great smokescreens while at the same time being so polarizing (wrongfully so) that they blot out more other grave matters and attract crazies that impede genuine progress in gender policy.
It would be nice if there were an app with it, that I could pull out when I was at the voting booth. The app would recognize my location, bring up the candidates I was voting on, and show me which ones I have liked and disliked.
Startup idea++: devise a way to eliminate the need for Congress, period.
Challenge is to strike balance between letting all citizens vote directly on law-making, while preventing fraud and allowing quality viable legal craftwork to occur. Corruption could still occur, but instead of only having to buy the votes of a 51-60%+ of a mere 500-ish Congressmen, one would have to buy the votes of 51%+ of 300 million US citizens.
I called my Senator's office yesterday and my conversation was very different. While the Senator has not decided his position yet, the young lady (god that makes me sound old) told me that they have taken many calls opposing SOPA.
I once had an aide from my Senator's office call me to ask for more clarification on an email I'd sent them about aviation usage fees. I was probably on the phone with the aide for 30 minutes as he took notes and clarified points. It wasn't a fluff call; he was legitimately gathering information to present to the Senator.
Not all is lost; there are still Senators out there, like mine who care about their constituents and listen. Keep the pressure up.
Why not record a few of the calls and post them online. NY law says you can record your calls as long as one of the parties on the call is aware it's being recorded (i.e. you).
The deadline for filing for the NY Senate Democratic Primary is May 21st. That means there is real time to find an anti-SOPA candidate to primary Schumer.
I also think somebody should think seriously about launching a PAC/SuperPAC around this. Calls help, but in washington money talks louder. Launch an 'internet pac' or 'innovation pac' with promises to put money in to Primarying or defeating pro-SOPA/PIPA politicians, and they'll start to listen. They know that the tech world has a lot of money, and can organize. We just need to do it.
This is the way to get things done. Calls are all well and good but Schumer likely dismisses them as a small but vocal minority. When there is serious money being spent against him, he'll pay attention.
Keep in mind, the people who answer your calls are (likely unpaid) high school or college interns, not "staffers." They are not the people who research or discuss policy issues, they likely are not very aware of the candidate's legislative positions except on issues that generate lots of angry calls from constituents with time on their hands, like Medicare benefits for seniors. They are not making official statements.
I don't understand the significance of this point. If I called and heard such things and they said "well that's just a flunkie who knows nothing, not the voice of the senator" I'd reply "How is this my problem? I call your office, this is who you chose to have answer: this person is speaking for you." Excuses like the one above only reflect even more poorly on the subject, "I have no idea what my staffers are saying to people, I'm unable to communicate effectively with my constituents, etc." None of these points reflect well on the senator.
When I called my reps (repeatedly) their staffers/phone-answerers would say absolutely nothing about SOPA to me. One (I forget which) said "he supports net neutrality," but beyond that it was "he's issued no statement, I don't know his stance, what was the name of the bill again?" I'm disgusted with all my legislators on this... each office (besides Brown, I think) agreed to follow up with me via email or phone when they find out more, none have. I live in western MA.
I am so tired of this sort of shit. Communicating your stance on an issue to your constituents is part of your job, legislators. If I call and you can't tell me your stance on a major issue like this, you are not doing your job, just like a dishwasher who throws plates in the trash. Raah.
Not saying anything is a whole lot better than the call described in the blog. That at least means they know it's unpopular and haven't decided which side to come down on yet (so they don't want to speak too soon and have to flip flop). The more they get worried about talking to you, the more it seems like they don't want to have anything to do with it. The most effective way to kill a bill is just to never vote on it.
Hopefully (I'm not super hopeful), what we're seeing is that the supporters of it don't want to have to back down, but everyone else just wants to leave the issue as far away as possible so they don't have to talk about it.
Yup - my take on this is that the guy on the phone is probably personally opposed to the bill, and is tired of having to talk to people angry about it all day, and just doesn't care enough to sugar-coat it and give any sort of official response. He's putting it the way he sees it from his perspective, no more, no less.
Of course, he's probably going to be fired if they figure out who he is, just like any phone-support person would be fired for saying things so far outside what the officially stated company position is. But on the other hand, he probably doesn't care too much - he'll get a few thousand karma on Reddit, "I got fired from Senator Schumer's Office for calling him out on supporting censorship, AMA", and he only took this job anyways because his rich uncle pulled too many strings to set it up for him to say no (even though he'd never asked in the first place, that was his mom). Shit, he doesn't care about politics anyways, he's going to be a musician, his parents just won't accept that because he hasn't gotten a record deal yet...
They are certainly unpaid. I've had some experience with congressional interns (I was one last summer and lived with a bunch of others), while he's clearly not speaking officially for their Senators, they are definitely informed enough that what he said clearly wasn't an accident. Maybe he's pissed about it too (more likely than an accident), but he's certainly aware. Given the controversy about the subject, I would imagine that he's got a very standardized response.
One thing they certainly do is record all the responses. He's got a tally of how many people called, from where, and what they thought about things even if he doesn't put much effort into responding.
When things are really controversial, they get absolutely flooded. I'm a little disappointed you got through at all. I know I had some friends this summer working in the offices of people on the super committee and they couldn't answer calls fast enough or even clear voice mails fast enough to keep the answering machine open. This tells me that a whole lot less people are calling than are saying they are calling from the internet.
I'm unsurprised people aren't calling in support; after all they don't need to campaign...
I also think people, i.e. the masses, aren't really aware yet. Most I am sure will be opposed when they figure it out, but there will be a proportion in favour.
I have seen people on Facebook posting in support.
Most I am sure will be opposed when they figure it out
I hope you are correct, but I fear you are not. Most of them think what they are told to think by their favorite news/infotainment provider. So unless great pains are taken to educate them they will support it.
His real constituents are the various companies that make up the banking sector - not the people in his district. Cynical? sure... but his sponsorship of this bill is very much in line with his almost republican-like business views. It's all about the benjamins.
Yes, America can rightly be called corporate ruled for the most part. So he doesn't really care about average public. He cares about corporations and their money.
Wait, wait, wait. So this was specifically about censoring "illegal" content? That's not in your post at all. in fact, you present it as a direct quote without mentioning illegal content at all. “Senator Schumer is in favor of censoring the internet.” Generically censoring the internet is much more sensational then specifically censoring illegal content. (However you define that, and yes I understand the nuance between how do you determine what's legal/illegal and what's not vis a vis copyright etc., but: the average layperson reading a sensationalized piece does not.)
I asked twice. The first time he said "censor the internet" and then I think he heard the shock in my voice when I asked him to repeat and he said "he is in favor of censoring illegal content." So perhaps worthy of a clarification.
"Censoring illegal content" is weasel terminology and a huge red herring. If a government chooses to censor content, that content is considered illegal by definition: if it wasn't considered illegal, the government would have no grounds to censor it.
The problem is not that they want to censor things. Almost everyone agrees that some things need to be censored (e.g. publications found to be defamatory, publications of stolen trade secrets, etc.). The problem is what content they want to be able to declare illegal at little more than a whim.
Well, let's give him credit. That staffer was at least honest. These congressmen aren't stupid, they well know that they support censorship and that's what all these PIPA and SOPA are about - censorship. And the fact that they don't openly speak about it doesn't change the essence.
But they are scared of publicity still. So thank you for publishing this encounter. It really needs a broader coverage.
The call wasn't recorded and I did not get the person's name. I took clear notes and asked him to repeat that the Senator is in favor of "censoring" illegal content, which he confirmed.
The way he said "censor" really made my skin crawl - it was so pompous. Gillibrand's people were nice, fyi.
I asked twice if he had spoken with any constituents over the phone who support the bill and he confirmed twice that he had not.
But still, I am not a journalist and didn't plan to blog about this except that I was so shocked by the replies I got. Surely people who work the phones at these offices must assume that everything they say could end up "on the internet"?
If the past months are any indication, no news organization is interested in reporting anything remotely relating to SOPA (except maybe as a short piece to promote it as "the legislation that will stop piracy for good" and that anyone who opposes this is a criminal).
SOPA did not get any media coverage, and I'd be surprised if flippant comments made by an anonymous staffer changed that.
The American press loves quoting 'sources close to the senator' or a 'White house senior staffer.' Most journalists have no problem quoting anonymous sources (when it promotes their agenda).
I wouldn't worry about not having taken the name of the person on the other end of the call.
They only do that when they are receiving information off the record, or the person isn't authorized to give their name. They don't do that when getting information second hand that isn't confirmable.
New York is a single-party-notification state as far as recording phone calls goes. If someone else calls, perhaps they can record it? It's pretty easy with Google Voice (though it does notify the other person).
So politicians can be bought, I meant lobbied, but won't answer to constituency? Time for tech lobbying groups to fund and put their candidates on the ballots. The Swedish Pirate Party has the right idea.
Politic is the game of deciding whose money are "redistributed" to whom. If we don't band together, we will be in the receiving end of these time and again.
Everyone, keep calling. This is evidence that Senators are getting lots of calls opposing PIPA. Even if it seems like they are not affecting anything, they are still (presumably) recording the number of opposition calls they get, and most of these Senators (presumably) still care about re-election. I still believe in tipping points. I have to...
But thanks for this information as well. The tipping points do not seem to be on our horizon, and information about the responses from senator offices, if it goes viral, can hopefully have a much-needed amplifying effect...
They really need to split out the "censor counterfeit products" from the "censor the Internet" part. Everyone is fine with the first, nobody is fine with the second. Let's meet in the middle.
"we are past the point where the internet should be considered a stand-alone industry."
I agree.. but it should be more than an industry. I spend more time on the internet than I do with my girlfriend. The internet is beyond a place where I work. It is a nation in a new dimension of space. As such it needs it's own regulation isolated from any individual land based nation-state.
I just spoke with two offices for representatives in Michigan and the basic response you'll receive is: "we'll take note of your opposition and pass it along to the representative."
I asked for a meeting and was told that I could either show up at the representative's office or leave a note.
It takes 5 minutes to do this, so please take a moment and call.
They say money is the Mother's milk of politics. I think someone should organize a political action committee to defend the Internet. It's important to keep it apolitical and target only those trying to censor or impede the net. In Sen. Schumer's case the solution is to primary him.
"So, this is a great example of the system failing us."
I think you have that backwards, it is an example of us failing the system. From Amanda's comment: "Today I called a Senator’s office for the first time."
What that says for the first time Amanda is engaged in the question of who best represents her views with respect to how we are governed. This is a great news. As other folks have pointed out this guy has been in office since 1975.
So many US citizens walk into a voting booth with a sort of half-baked, maybe completely unbaked, idea about what they are doing there. Worse, anywhere from 20 to 85 percent of the people who registered to vote don't even bother walking in and voting!
The people who walk in with no prep at all are the most malleable by advertising of the "me good! him bad!" type. They form a sort of Gaussian foam distribution of votes where the investment in advertisements can push the median slightly over to one candidate resulting in elections which are won with 1 - 5% of the votes cast.
The "system" that was set up was designed for people to actually invest time and effort into identifying the best candidate out of the available choices, and if unhappy with those choices providing a new candidate the next time which was a better choice. But when people don't vote or vote randomly, they fail that system.
You can proactively improve the system with a simple algorithm,
1) Vote - this is required since the system only responds to votes cast, not blog postings or public outrage.
2) If you like the way this office is working, vote the incumbent, if you don't vote anyone else.
As the algorithm takes effect, the only successful response of the system is to act in a way such that the voters 'vote incumbent'. The amazing power of this algorithm was demonstrated in Russian elections where the media suggests it took large, overt, and fraudulent activities to overcome all of the votes for someone other than Putin. Had those people just 'not voted' it would have not had the effect it had.
So if you want better politicians, vote. If you want to magnify your impact, get as many friends as you can to vote. If you don't have time to research candidates and talk to them to converge quickly on a solution, then use the above algorithm to evolve better representation.
I very much agree that participating in the system is essential. I vote early and often, as the saying goes, and bug friends about issues.
In some sense, yeah, we've failed the system. Then again, the address to that is really uncomfortable: the system was designed to deal with people who actually were (nominally) fit to govern themselves. I would posit the (loathsome) idea that most of the population functions mainly to consume services and act selfishly. They have no great intellect, ambition, desire, or goal beyond feeling good and being happy. There is nothing "wrong" with this, but that's the way it is--consider the evolution of the computers and programming away from terminal-driven computation devices to slick advertising delivery systems. There is a lot to unpack, but it isn't productive to do that here.
As for your algorithm, it's crap. Here's why.
First, the system technically functions based solely on votes, but these votes can be changed by gerrymandering, hacking voting machines, rigging elections, etc. Don't pretend like your vote is some assured method of sending an impulse (however small) to the system. Note also that once candidates are in office, the system responds to their whims, and in turn many whims can be affected by extortion, blackmail, bribery, corruption, or whatever else.
Second, you assert that you still vote when the incumbent isn't working out--you just vote against them. This is wrong, because the information you want to convey--"The candidate in office is not one I want"--is now altered to something else--"I want this particular candidate in office". You've given away the ability to say "None of these candidates are worth a damn, give us new ones".
Any system that will seriously allow the election of dead men into office in preference to a living being, no matter who despicable, is failed.
The system is very much failing us. That said, it's near impossible to fix it--there is a lot of inertia, and we can't exactly bring it down for three months for a refactor, now can we?
Oh, you can certainly bring it down for a refactor. Just grab your guns, as long as our previous laziness has not allowed those in power to take them away.
Am I advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government? Nnnnnnope, just stating a point.
Ok, let me share my reasoning and assumptions which might make my position clearer.
"First, the system technically functions based solely on votes, but these votes can be changed by gerrymandering, hacking voting machines, rigging elections, etc. Don't pretend like your vote is some assured method of sending an impulse (however small) to the system. Note also that once candidates are in office, the system responds to their whims, and in turn many whims can be affected by extortion, blackmail, bribery, corruption, or whatever else."
So let us separate out the difference between 'vote fraud' (aka the illegal manipulation of the vote) and voting legal voting changes (districts, rank-choice, open primary, etc etc).
While there are notable cases of voting fraud (the most famous perhaps being the Chicago elections) there is no evidence that such systems persist today. Conspiracy theories aside, I assume that most voting is legit in the US.
Now that leaves manipulation of the voting pool through either redistricting or voter polls manipulation (preventing undesirable voters from signing up or signing up more desirable voters). In a contest where voter turnout is < 60% and the winning margin is < 5%, getting half the people who don't vote at all to come in and vote intelligently (which is to say responsibly) will cause the correct outcome to occur.
To your second point:
"Second, you assert that you still vote when the incumbent isn't working out--you just vote against them. This is wrong, because the information you want to convey--'The candidate in office is not one I want'--is now altered to something else--'I want this particular candidate in office'. You've given away the ability to say 'None of these candidates are worth a damn, give us new ones'."
The effect of eliminating the current incumbent is achieved. One of the ways people demonstrate that evolution works, rather than just a 'theory' as ID folks would suggest, is by creating a population where births and deaths are controlled by a simple fitness function, the simplest possible examples evolves to support the fitness function in a remarkably small number of generations. In our case 'death' is 'not re-elected' and birth is 'elected.' Without any other influence we can show mathematically that because candidates want to be elected the fitness function will drive them to doing what this population of voters considers a 'good job' and away from what they consider a 'bad job'.
Now you and I may not agree with a district's definition of what that is, but the system will insure that the district gets what they want.
We're going to need a new DNS system, plain and simple. A complete replacement for ICANN and one that bypasses the United States. The walls are going up around this regime and like the other authoritarian bills passed (Patriot Act, DHS etc) these bills will eventually pass. So planning needs to start now.
It's a peer-to-peer DNS system based on IPv6. The proof of concept is in place, and I've used it and it works. Now it needs to scale and hit critical mass. I encourage anyone interested in fixing DNS to participate.
This article ends with direct lines to call both DC and NYC offices of Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand. She also lists a sample script. Someone, if they have the resources and money (for paying for calls), could easily create an automated Twilio script to auto-dial this number with a pre-formatted script and insert some dynamic text for a name and phone number. You could then create a website for people to voice their concerns and auto-dial with an automated message on their behalf.
I think that's a pretty bad idea. The benefit of calling in person is that it shows that you really care enough to have an actual conversation with a person. If you're just getting 100 robo-calls it's going to seem like astro-turfing (which it kind of will be).
You can automate dialing through the menu so long as the tree is always the same. Twilio provides the ability to send key presses and is quite easy to use.
This whole SOPA debacle has convinced me more than ever that the feedback loop between constituents and representatives is absolutely terrible. This would be an attempt to solve the problem (via public humiliation).