Votetocracy
Why we built Votetocracy
Frustration, Ignorance and a lot of hope: Why we created Votetocracy
We thought it is important to let everyone know why we created Votetocracy.com. As many Americans we were frustrated. Frustrated by some of the events of the last year (this post was originally written in 2009) and by our own ignorance about what actually goes on within Congress.
Ignorance
I for one was ignorant about politics. Shameful as it seems, I was not interested. Partly because it seemed confusing and partly because it was and still is hard to know what to believe. Especially when the finger pointing and confusion of an election year kicks in. So I went about learning more. I first found congress.gov. On the site I found gibberish. Terms like "Concurrent House resolution referred to the committee of ways and means on motion to cloture". I am a college educated man and had to read that several times before it stuck. Even if citizens wanted to really get involved and find out what is going on in Congress - terms like these would quickly dissuade them from continuing their noble pursuit.
Frustration
How could Washington and Wall Street allow such a crazy situation to occur. We are referring to - of course - the housing collapse, sub-prime mortgage crisis and the eventual credit crisis. Like many Americans I took special interest in the election year. During the election campaigns we listened to all the political banter. He said she said, but when he said she was saying something else so it can't be true unless he never said it before she did. HUH? We were lost in the maze of poli-speak. So we though... I guess we'll just have to wait and see which of these politicians are going to deliver on their promises. And hope those promises are aligned with what Americans want for our country.
Hope
It needs to be said that we love America. All things considered, this is still the greatest country. So we are still hopeful about the outcome and future of our country. And we truly believe that most politicians have greatest intentions and are honorable people. But we still wondered - what if we didn't have to listen to it all? What if we could just decide what we wanted for ourselves? Or at least influence Congressional decisions. What is we could tell Congressional representatives what we want them to do and measure they outcomes. After all, they work for us right? BINGO! The magic moment! We don't have to wait and see. We CAN tell them want. And so... a few friends sat down and talked about how we could give every American the ability to tell Congress what we want from them. Sounds like Democracy doesn't it. During this early planning, we decided on a few guiding principles. Here they are:
- Votetocracy must let Americans know about the bills that are actually being considered in government right now
- Votetocracy must do this in a way that will make it easy for all Americans to understand
- Votetocracy must allow Americans to take action by voting for themselves and letting their representatives know how they voted
So we got to work and here we are.
