Crowd-sourced policy

As we've developed the NewGov platform, we've discovered:

1. People are disinterested in decision making unless we know we're talking to our representatives.
2. Our representatives are disinterested in people unless they know the the people are their constituents.
3. Actually, we're mostly interersted in sharing our opinions and helping policies emerge.
4. Each jurisdiction must have its own social network, for neighbors to engage neighbors. NewGov provides a social network for each of America's:
   • 50 states
   • 100 senate seats
   • 435 congressional districts
   • 1,967 state senate districts
   • 4,745 state house districts
   • 3,234 counties
   • 3,601 cities
   • 938 city council districts in the 50 largest cities
     15,070 total jurisdictional social networks
5. Each of those networks must offer best-of-breed blogging, commenting, polls, petitions, timelines, hooks into Facebook, Twitter, etc.
6. Data and insights from the Sunlight Foundation ecosystem must be seamlessly woven into each jurisdiction's network.
7. We must be empowered to create our own issue-based social networks. That's where the real work is done.
8. It takes only a few certified constituents to command a politician's attention.
9. Maps, maps, maps. We like to see our jurisdictions and representatives on a map to keep a sense of the real world we're talking about.

We have carefully hidden all that engineering, since the site cannot be overtly about decision making (rule #3). For people who want to look under the hood, the NewGov Guide presents enough to satisfy most wonks.