4 ms·

I find the fact that nobody seems to know how those names got into the bill particularly frustrating. Lawmakers really need to learn to use version tracking pr

by simonw 10mo ago

I find the fact that nobody seems to know how those names got into the bill particularly frustrating. Lawmakers really need to learn to use version tracking properly. It's shouldn't be possible for a single line of text to make it into a bill without a digital trail leading back to whoever added it.

defrost 10mo ago
Yes, that .. but also - heat map activity tracking. It's often not so much what's in the three thousand pages of filler and bumf, rather more what's in the several paragraphs that get the bulk of the rewrites and horse trading - that and the last apparently unrelated change that kicks a proprosed Bill over the line to pass.
- mschuster91 10mo ago
  Or we could limit the size of laws? No more "omnibus" bills, no more horsetrading, no more bullshit. If it is too long to read and comprehend in a single day in full, it needs to be broken down into smaller laws, or contents be cut entirely.
Analemma_ 10mo ago
I don’t want to pick on you specifically, because this is just one example of a very common pathology, but this is such an “HN-brained” comment. “They didn’t use version control” is ten million miles from the real problem here, and adopting version control would improve literally nothing about this situation.
- simonw 10mo ago
  I deliberately didn't say version control (which would imply git or similar, and we know they're not going to learn that). I said version tracking. They use word processors to write the things, they could at least learn to turn on "track changes". I genuinely do believe that a law that says "all laws must be able to show author tracking on a per-line basis" would improve democracy. Convince me otherwise!
  - koakuma-chan 10mo ago
    Enabling version tracking would not be any different from learning Git if both require passing a law. The real problem is that those people are clueless and there is no one to guide them. It's probably a decent startup idea, software for lawmakers.
    - garciasn 10mo ago
      While that may be true, software for this would never become commonplace nor useful. Why? Because: 1. They’d never enable it for the final bill and thus all prior changes would fall under legislative privilege and thus the public would never see it. 2. Government moves slowly and isn’t generally apt to adopt technology as rapidly as they should. The workflows would need to change significantly and that would be impossible/take an inordinate amount of time. But; see #1. —- I went through a long and arduous legal process as part of my divorce. While my attorney preferred sharing redlines, the other attorney never shared it back that way, or even in a Word doc; they always sent PDF images. Based on how many times we redlined stuff and the other side would just treat it as if it hadn’t happened was absurd. If this sort of behavior is entrenched in the legal field, I can’t imagine it would ever work when attorneys, governments, and industry players are involved.
      - koakuma-chan 10mo ago
        If you were making a startup, this could be a feature. Automatically detect what changed, and generate a visual diff. But you are right, and that's what I am saying. The government will never become better on its own. You would need to take its hand and keep holding it forever, or it will get lost.
  - buu700 10mo ago
    I'll go further and say they should 100% use version control. I understand why they don't right now, but accommodating that seems like a relatively obvious lay-up for Microsoft. They could open source a docx-diffing/merging git extension, integrate it into GitHub, and integrate GitHub into Word. I'd also add that Word could add first-class Markdown/.md support. Seems like a pretty natural direction to go in as AI-assisted drafting/editing becomes increasingly commonplace, and would further simplify the GitHub integration.
- teddy-smith 10mo ago
  I'm sorry you're not able to see that version control can really help in contexts outside of tech. You can track changes, and diff, and blame. Wouldn't solve the corruption in this case but could definitely shine a light on it.
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    The corruption is what prevents the use of the version control, by the people who would like to continue being corrupt. You would need a disinterested party with authority to mandate its use.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> Lawmakers really need to learn to use version tracking properly Not how reconciliation-based negotiations work. Behind every material lawmaker you’d have redlines circulating among their staff. Each industry group would have them circulating among its members. Each citizen group, too. These will be haphazardly combined among the groups, sometimes transparently, sometimes strategically. It’s still traceable. But not necessarily in one go, and probably only through a lawmaker who doesn’t want to look duped. There was a good article on the immortality of Word recently that addressed this.
- simonw 10mo ago
  Even being able to credit a line to an individual lawmaker's office would be better than what we have now.
  - potato3732842 10mo ago
    They'll just negotiate who does what off the record and trade around like they do with votes.
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > being able to credit a line to an individual lawmaker's office would be better than what we have now It looks like North Dakota uses a LegCo. If the edits were in the original draft, no lawmaker added them.
- Ericson2314 10mo ago
  Nothing you write here is not compatible with regular version control systems
  - Arrowmaster 10mo ago
    The point is that they don't want it to be that transparent to everyone.
    - 10mo ago
pessimizer 10mo ago
> Lawmakers really need to learn to use version tracking properly. Why in the world would they want to do that? For you and the rest of the public to figure out who to blame for things? It's not a matter of ignorance. Forcing them to use version control could be a good idea in theory. You can't force them to do anything though, because they make the rules.
snarf21 10mo ago
I was under the impression that the majority of all bills (laws) are written directly by the lobbyists and think tanks. The staff just copy/pasta the requests all together.
nxobject 10mo ago
This being highly embarrassing, I assume enough people can make a good guess at who it was, and won’t admit it on the record. It would beg the “why”, after all.
3eb7988a1663 10mo ago
Does not give you any insight in the provenance, but Philip James has an awesome talk[0] where he uses Datasette to collect city government documents to be in a more structured format for analysis. Lots of clever automation to extract data from PDFs. Really some amazing work for surfacing civic decisions. [0] https://pyvideo.org/pybay-2024/automate-your-city-data-with-python.html https://pyvideo.org/pybay-2024/automate-your-city-data-with-... "Automate Your City Data with Python"
throw0101c 10mo ago
> It's shouldn't be possible for a single line of text to make it into a bill without a digital trail leading back to whoever added it. Counter-argument: there are GOPers afraid of standing up to Trump because they fear that doing so would trigger violence from MAGAland. E.g. * https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/violent-threats-pile-up-as-indiana-republicans-confront-pressure-from-trump-on-redistricting https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/violent-threats-pile-u... People used to vote for candidates in elections in public, and there was all sorts of intimidation and violence until secret ballots were rolled out. I'm generally for political/politician transparency, but let's not ignore some of the trade-offs.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  Introducing bills (and voting on most things, though non-recorded voice votes do occur) in legislative bodies in the US is already public, what is being called for here has no bearing on that, it is about tracking edits leading up to those already-accountable events by staffers working on the bill before it is introduced (or doing thr same for an amendment that changes the text of a bill.)
dragonwriter 10mo ago
There are records of who introduced and voted for each version of the bill and each change to it; individual responsibility for edits leading up to those actions are internal matters for the individual members offices, who is responsible for the content of the bill is unambiguous. The mystery being invented here is a distraction from that clear line of responsibility, and you are falling for it.
- IAmBroom 10mo ago
  The single person who introduced the errant version is in no way guaranteed to know who wrote the changes. Lawmakers have staff (and external interest groups) who build and shape the documents. We may optimistically presume that each lawmaker reads each change that they are proposing... but that's not true.

by simonw 10mo ago

defrost 10mo ago

Yes, that .. but also - heat map activity tracking. It's often not so much what's in the three thousand pages of filler and bumf, rather more what's in the several paragraphs that get the bulk of the rewrites and horse trading - that and the last apparently unrelated change that kicks a proprosed Bill over the line to pass.

mschuster91 10mo ago
Or we could limit the size of laws? No more "omnibus" bills, no more horsetrading, no more bullshit. If it is too long to read and comprehend in a single day in full, it needs to be broken down into smaller laws, or contents be cut entirely.

Analemma_ 10mo ago

I don’t want to pick on you specifically, because this is just one example of a very common pathology, but this is such an “HN-brained” comment. “They didn’t use version control” is ten million miles from the real problem here, and adopting version control would improve literally nothing about this situation.

simonw 10mo ago
I deliberately didn't say version control (which would imply git or similar, and we know they're not going to learn that). I said version tracking. They use word processors to write the things, they could at least learn to turn on "track changes". I genuinely do believe that a law that says "all laws must be able to show author tracking on a per-line basis" would improve democracy. Convince me otherwise!
- koakuma-chan 10mo ago
  Enabling version tracking would not be any different from learning Git if both require passing a law. The real problem is that those people are clueless and there is no one to guide them. It's probably a decent startup idea, software for lawmakers.
  - garciasn 10mo ago
    While that may be true, software for this would never become commonplace nor useful. Why? Because: 1. They’d never enable it for the final bill and thus all prior changes would fall under legislative privilege and thus the public would never see it. 2. Government moves slowly and isn’t generally apt to adopt technology as rapidly as they should. The workflows would need to change significantly and that would be impossible/take an inordinate amount of time. But; see #1. —- I went through a long and arduous legal process as part of my divorce. While my attorney preferred sharing redlines, the other attorney never shared it back that way, or even in a Word doc; they always sent PDF images. Based on how many times we redlined stuff and the other side would just treat it as if it hadn’t happened was absurd. If this sort of behavior is entrenched in the legal field, I can’t imagine it would ever work when attorneys, governments, and industry players are involved.
    - koakuma-chan 10mo ago
      If you were making a startup, this could be a feature. Automatically detect what changed, and generate a visual diff. But you are right, and that's what I am saying. The government will never become better on its own. You would need to take its hand and keep holding it forever, or it will get lost.
- buu700 10mo ago
  I'll go further and say they should 100% use version control. I understand why they don't right now, but accommodating that seems like a relatively obvious lay-up for Microsoft. They could open source a docx-diffing/merging git extension, integrate it into GitHub, and integrate GitHub into Word. I'd also add that Word could add first-class Markdown/.md support. Seems like a pretty natural direction to go in as AI-assisted drafting/editing becomes increasingly commonplace, and would further simplify the GitHub integration.
teddy-smith 10mo ago
I'm sorry you're not able to see that version control can really help in contexts outside of tech. You can track changes, and diff, and blame. Wouldn't solve the corruption in this case but could definitely shine a light on it.
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  The corruption is what prevents the use of the version control, by the people who would like to continue being corrupt. You would need a disinterested party with authority to mandate its use.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> Lawmakers really need to learn to use version tracking properly Not how reconciliation-based negotiations work. Behind every material lawmaker you’d have redlines circulating among their staff. Each industry group would have them circulating among its members. Each citizen group, too. These will be haphazardly combined among the groups, sometimes transparently, sometimes strategically. It’s still traceable. But not necessarily in one go, and probably only through a lawmaker who doesn’t want to look duped. There was a good article on the immortality of Word recently that addressed this.

simonw 10mo ago
Even being able to credit a line to an individual lawmaker's office would be better than what we have now.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  They'll just negotiate who does what off the record and trade around like they do with votes.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > being able to credit a line to an individual lawmaker's office would be better than what we have now It looks like North Dakota uses a LegCo. If the edits were in the original draft, no lawmaker added them.
Ericson2314 10mo ago
Nothing you write here is not compatible with regular version control systems
- Arrowmaster 10mo ago
  The point is that they don't want it to be that transparent to everyone.
  - 10mo ago

pessimizer 10mo ago

> Lawmakers really need to learn to use version tracking properly. Why in the world would they want to do that? For you and the rest of the public to figure out who to blame for things? It's not a matter of ignorance. Forcing them to use version control could be a good idea in theory. You can't force them to do anything though, because they make the rules.

snarf21 10mo ago

I was under the impression that the majority of all bills (laws) are written directly by the lobbyists and think tanks. The staff just copy/pasta the requests all together.

nxobject 10mo ago

This being highly embarrassing, I assume enough people can make a good guess at who it was, and won’t admit it on the record. It would beg the “why”, after all.

3eb7988a1663 10mo ago

Does not give you any insight in the provenance, but Philip James has an awesome talk[0] where he uses Datasette to collect city government documents to be in a more structured format for analysis. Lots of clever automation to extract data from PDFs. Really some amazing work for surfacing civic decisions. [0] https://pyvideo.org/pybay-2024/automate-your-city-data-with-python.html https://pyvideo.org/pybay-2024/automate-your-city-data-with-... "Automate Your City Data with Python"

throw0101c 10mo ago

> It's shouldn't be possible for a single line of text to make it into a bill without a digital trail leading back to whoever added it. Counter-argument: there are GOPers afraid of standing up to Trump because they fear that doing so would trigger violence from MAGAland. E.g. * https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/violent-threats-pile-up-as-indiana-republicans-confront-pressure-from-trump-on-redistricting https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/violent-threats-pile-u... People used to vote for candidates in elections in public, and there was all sorts of intimidation and violence until secret ballots were rolled out. I'm generally for political/politician transparency, but let's not ignore some of the trade-offs.

dragonwriter 10mo ago
Introducing bills (and voting on most things, though non-recorded voice votes do occur) in legislative bodies in the US is already public, what is being called for here has no bearing on that, it is about tracking edits leading up to those already-accountable events by staffers working on the bill before it is introduced (or doing thr same for an amendment that changes the text of a bill.)

dragonwriter 10mo ago

There are records of who introduced and voted for each version of the bill and each change to it; individual responsibility for edits leading up to those actions are internal matters for the individual members offices, who is responsible for the content of the bill is unambiguous. The mystery being invented here is a distraction from that clear line of responsibility, and you are falling for it.

IAmBroom 10mo ago
The single person who introduced the errant version is in no way guaranteed to know who wrote the changes. Lawmakers have staff (and external interest groups) who build and shape the documents. We may optimistically presume that each lawmaker reads each change that they are proposing... but that's not true.