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I've dreamed up something like this as well and realistically there isn't anything preventing us from using git to manage our laws. As a strawman to beat up, he
by nathanhammond 14y ago
I've dreamed up something like this as well and realistically there isn't anything preventing us from using git to manage our laws. As a strawman to beat up, here is an example of how it could work:
git clone legislature/generalstatutes
s/marijuana/sugar/g
git commit -am "Turn sugar into a controlled substance."
git request-pull
Legislators
If interested, # git branch bill_12345
git pull nathanhammond/generalstatutes
// Continue editing the "Sugar as a controlled substance" bill.
Spin off to committee (read/write to committee members)
git clone legislature/generalstatutes
git checkout bill_12345
// Continue editing the "Sugar as a controlled substance" bill.
git commit -am "Committee updates."
Take a vote for leaving committee.
If successful, # git request-pull
General legislature takes a vote.
If successful, # git merge bill_12345 master --signoff (Legislators that voted for it.)
Benefits:
- Encourages broader participation in democracy.
- Cryptographically signed. We'll know if you voted for or wrote it.
- Tracks history of all changes (at least at the commit level). If something comes out of committee very different from how it went in you can easily find every change.
- Makes it easier for newspeople to identify how the law is changing.
- An interface like GitHub over top of the repository could hide all of the complexity, allow for line-by-line comments, and general comments.
- Registering to the interface with your voter ID could allow for representatives to identify or poll constituents.
Problems:
- Requires behavioral change for legislators who I would not necessarily classify as "early adopters."
- Still possible to "launder" the creator by having somebody else make the changes for you.
- In place modification of the law. To this point when something is repealed it typically looks something like this: http://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_153/GS_153-1_through_153-382.html http://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySect...