WILL ENTICEMENTS AND BENEFITS LURE VOTERS TO ADAPT?

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ENTICEMENTS NOT ENTITLEMENTS

The Political Advisory Panel of America will deliver three transparency tools not available via current methods of advising legislators – Advisory Voting Metrics, Accountability Score Cards, Voter Guides.  

1. Constituents will be willing to abandon traditional methods of advising their legislators to access and participate in the three transparency aids that will be available through the Political Advisory Panel of America.  The more constituents participate through PAPA, the more these tools will press legislators to be more accountable to their constituents. 
2. PAPA's three transparency aids, Advisory Voting (AV) Metrics, Accountability Scorecards, and Voter Guides (all described on this page), will help PAPA to become more POWERFUL than tradition methods of advising representatives and senators.     

ADVISORY VOTING METRICS  

1. On a daily basis, the PAPA website will publish updated tallies of 'yea' Advisory Votes and 'nay' Advisory Votes generated through the PAPA application by verified voting-eligible citizens. These daily tallies, called Advisory Voting Metrics, are accrued separately for each bill and for each representative and senator. 
2. Generalized Advisory Voting Metrics will be available to the public, but more useful detailed state-wide and detailed congressional district-wide Advisory Voting Metrics will be available to participating Advisory Voters and legislators alike.  In both generalized and detailed metrics, the privacy of each Advisory Voting constituent is preserved.   See link in title above for differences between generalized and detailed Advisory Voting Metrics. 

Benefits of Advisory Voting Metrics   

1. For hundreds of thousands of constituents in each congressional district, access to Advisory Voting Metrics will provide legislative transparency AND hard data to augment form letters from their legislators. Transparency builds trust and trust builds participation. PAPA's additional data prevents constituents from feeling marginalized by their representatives or senators. 
2. For legislators, these metrics not only provide a running poll of voter directives, but the final tally also provides measurable congressional district-wide and senatorial state-wide constituent input before the final vote on each bill (i.e.:  the volume of citizens responding plus their directive for action).  

ACCOUNTABILITY SCORECARDS

1. Following the final vote on each bill by the House of Representatives or the Senate, the PAPA website will publish generalized and detailed Accountability Scorecards output by the PAPA application for each legislator (see link in title above for differences between generalized and detailed Accountability Scorecards). For a given bill, detailed Accountability Scorecards will inform every participating Advisory Voter exactly how THEIR representative and senators voted compared to the majority of constituent advice received through PAPA from THEIR congressional district and state. 
2. Of course, Advisory Voters can also independently compare their personal Advisory Vote to the vote cast by their legislators. 
3. Because PAPA provides legislators with space to post their early point of view for each bill for constituent review, Accountability Scorecards will also indicate if representatives’ and senators’ final votes are the same or different than their early point of view on the bill.  
4. PAPA also provides representatives and senators with space to explain their final vote on each bill to address their constituent concerns.  

 BRINGING IT TOGETHER

1. By combining constituents’ detailed ADVISORY VOTING METRICS with legislators' detailed  ACCOUNTABILITY SCORECARDS from PAPA, participating constituents will be better able to judge levels of advice received by, and actions taken by, representatives and senators.  This transparency in the legislative process will shed light on who legislators are representing - their constituents or someone else. Additionally, Voter Guides (see below) will provide direct metrics on the fiduciary performance of legislators. 
2. The desired result is to have more legislators acting in more of a fiduciary capacity for their constituents.  

MORE TRANSPARENCY, GUIDES, LEGITIMACY

1. There are other associated processes and by-products of PAPA’s three transparency aids that will also press legislators to be more accountable to their constituents. 
2. These associated processes and products, listed below, also make PAPA more POWERFUL than tradition methods of advising representatives and senators.      

            TRANSPARENCY

• The transparency provided by PAPA will help citizens gain more trust in their government.  With more transparency and more trust will come more citizen involvement. 

           VOTER GUIDES  

• Historical summaries of every legislator's Accountability Scorecards, called Voter Guides, will also be published by PAPA prior to every U.S. general election. These summaries will indicate the number of votes cast by each legislator that were in agreement with, and the number of votes cast in opposition to, their constituency's majority advice received through PAPA during their term in office.  During general elections, these Voter Guides will help voters cast more informed votes for or against their representatives and senators running for re-election. These Voter Guides may also help remind voters if their legislators kept their campaign promises, or not.  Of course, Advisory Voters can also independently compare their legislators’ voting record to their own Advisory Voting input.  

            LEGITIMACY  

• To provide legitimacy to the Advisory Voting processes, PAPA’s Registration  procedures will include up-front verification of an Advisory Voter’s identity, citizenship, and voter eligibility.  PAPA's procedures will also assure that each constituent can cast only one final Advisory Vote per bill per personal legislator.  PAPA will have more stringent requirements to advise elected officials than many states require to elect those officials into office – further demonstrating the legitimacy of PAPA’s processes.      

MODERNIZATION  

This proposal also recommends both chambers of Congress modernize their practices and facilities to enable rapid and trustworthy electronic voting on EVERY bill and resolution that comes before them.  

• Electronic voting will facilitate Accountability Scorecards on all congressional business. 
• Previously, a common answer to the question “What's behind a political outcome?” used to be "Follow the money".  After PAPA is established, the new response may be "Follow the Advisory Votes".