Review Democracy: the TLDR version

I realize that the orginal post was a little long and so here is an excerpt with just the essentials:

The concept I want to put forward we'll call Review Democracy. The basic way it works is like this: everyone has jury duty once in awhile but instead of being a jury in a trial you go to the courthouse and you sit down and are given a stack of actions to review. These actions consist of the various votes that your politicians have made, so when a politician votes for or against legislation that constitutes an action, and now your job is to rate it. You are deciding whether you approve or disapprove of what your politicians have done. The stack of cards sitting on your desk are all the actions you have to review. You are not allowed to just pencil whip this process and to guarantee that you don't the process is divided up into blocks of actions to review.

You are shown brief summaries of every bill voted on during the last review period. You’re not voting directly on politicians – you're voting indirectly by ranking their bills. Do you approve of SB 104? Yes or no. SB 105? Yes or no. The citizen watches the video that summarizes what's in the bill and then votes approve or disapprove.

• If a politician voted for the bill and the majority approve of it that equals + 1 point
• If a politician voted for the bill and the majority disapproves that equals - 1 point
• If a politician voted against the bill and the majority approves - 1 point
• If a politician voted against the bill and the majority disapproves + 1 point

This is done for each and every bill that is voted on by Congress.

Now you may say that this process cannot be trusted but ballot initiatives are already governed by a process where the "gist" of the proposal must be accurate. In fact this can be a source of legal contention when interested and usually financial parties don't like the way the ballot initiative turned out. The problem of gaming the system by manipulating the language of the summaries could be solved by having competing proposals for the language and having the same citizen jury that votes to approve or disapprove actions finish out their term by voting on the language of each summary which will be studied by the next jury. There last act before collecting their weekly payment for their jury service is to ensure the proper language for their successors. They break into teams to propose summary language for bills and then vote as a whole on which language for each bill they like the most.

The jury duty payment should be handsome, and it should replace lost wages at 100%, and employers need to be penalized if they interfere with the process. In fact the employer should be ordered to order the employee to go to jury service.

Every member of Congress now has a point score which measures how well their actions adhere to the general will of the population. This is an approval rating but unlike simply asking people in a poll whether they like someone this "approval rating" measures the actions of politicians. It measures how well their actions align with the will of the public. It does not measure their popularity but their LOYALTY. How loyal is Senator Joe blow to the common people? How disloyal is he to the lobbyists and activists?

The word loyalty sounds a little Orwellian so let's call it his fidelity score.

Fidelity scores are calculated at each level of the government, municipal, county, state, and federal (these are the levels in America). Those politicians that have the highest fidelity score at the municipal and county level can run for vacancies at the state level, those with the highest fidelity scores can run for vacancies at the federal level. Those with the highest fidelity scores at the federal level can run for President of the United States.

The fidelity score replaces political party primary elections as the selection mechanism for choosing candidates. 

And it doesn't just work on the front end it also works on the back end too. Candidates with the lowest fidelity score are barred from seeking reelection. The people vote in the general election for what percentage of politicians to remove from office. They vote in 10% increments of no less than 10% and no greater than 50%. Mark on the ballot the eviction rate you prefer: 

• 10%
• 20%
• 30%
• 40%
• 50%

The median number that the public chooses becomes the eviction rate, the rate at which the lowest percentage of politicians as ranked by their fidelity scores is barred from reelection. You count up from the bottom of the fidelity score list. Let's say the people decide to get rid of 17% of incumbents. You count up from the bottom of the fidelity score list until you reach 17%.

Take 40% and subtract the eviction rate and the number you get is the percentage of top performers that are allowed to run for the next office above them. If say 25% are evicted then the top 15% are allowed to run for the next highest office. This is how the progression rate up the ranks is determined. It means that states with underperforming politicians will send fewer candidates to the federal level and municipalities that underperform will send fewer to the state level. If the calculated progression rate is a negative number then that level of government fields no candidates.

Thus, candidates are held accountable in two ways, first they make themselves eligible for election at the next higher level by achieving a high fidelity score. They still have to stand for election just like any other democracy but they are only allowed on the ballot if the people like their actions at the level that was lower. Second, they are removed from office when their actions deviate too much from the general will and they wind up with an abysmal fidelity score.

Let us call this whole thing Review Democracy, and let us say that Review Democracy has two components: Review Primary Democracy, and Term Limits By Review.

At every level of the government fidelity scores are calculated for politicians. Citizens are randomly selected by lottery to go to the courthouse, read summaries or "gists" of all bills that were voted upon and vote approve or disapprove for each one. This data is then used to calculate the scores of all politicians. The entire process is open to public scrutiny and all records are public, except the identities of the individual voters. In courthouses across the Nation this is happening everywhere. It is a vast decentralized data collation project.

Just like a business every employee gets reviewed by their employers. In this case elected representatives are the employees and voters are the ones doing review. Each courthouse determines its own criteria for what it wants to review but at minimum they must review votes on all the bills. They may also review speeches, executive orders, and litigation their politicians are involved with. The criteria for what gets reviewed is a local determination voted on by the people doing the review.

For better or worse this system would practically destroy the two party system, would align all politicians with the attitudes of the public, and would severely curtail both the role of money and activism in politics. This is everything the ordinary person says they want and so I want the reader to take a moment and think about what they want. It is possible to design almost any system to do a particular thing once you know enough about constitutional structure and regard the game as a game with no holy hang-ups.

You say you want a government that responds to the needs of the little guy. Well this is it, this is the design that gets you there.