Holding Our Representatives Accountable

[dsernst]

The liquid_vote app can grade existing politians for how well they align with the network, e.g. identifying the bills where they vote against the majority of their constituents.

Now a suggestion was proposed to do the grade on a curve: among all of the city’s elected officials, how well does each represent the network, relative to each other.

For example, if there are five grades in a particular university course, A, B, C, D, and F, where A is reserved for the top 20% of students, B for the next 30%, C for the next 30%-40%, and D or F for the remaining 10%-20%, then scores in the percentile interval from 0% to 20% will receive a grade of D or F, scores from 21% to 50% will receive a grade of C, scores from 51% to 80% receive a grade of B, and scores from 81% to 100% will achieve a grade of A. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_on_a_curve

What this means in practice is that elected reps become much more motivated to one-up each other to do their best to represent the network.

And unlike current politics, this structurally discards the 50% - 50% binary that the US is stuck in. Right now the story is “The other ’team’ are bad guys... vote us into office or else! Support us at all times, and definitely never criticize us, or else you’re helping the enemy!”

But the same story is told on both sides. Good vs evil, us vs them.

Even if a politician really does have the best of intentions, they're incentivized to further divide us, giving them more power. It’s a vicious cycle we’re stuck in.

Grading them on a curve turns the table around, and makes them work for US instead of their party.

[dsernst]

Early draft: https://gitter.im/liquidvote/org?at=589c3020aa800ee52c70a329

[dsernst]

Lots of good info in https://gist.github.com/dsernst/624a29e252951bbd5f773ca47edfa89c on this topic as well

[dsernst]

Published https://blog.united.vote/2017/12/08/give-your-rep-an-f-introducing-united-legislator-grades/