TechCrunch Launches CrunchGov, a Tech Policy Platform

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 26, 2012 @05:01AM from the series-of-tubes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TechCrunch has launched a project called CrunchGov, which aims to bring educated people together to work on tech-related government policy. 'It includes a political leaderboard that grades politicians based on how they vote on tech issues, a light legislative database of technology policy, and a public markup utility for crowdsourcing the best ideas on pending legislation.' They give politicians scores based on how their votes align with consensus on policy in the tech industry. 'A trial run of the public markup utility in Congress has already proven successful. When Rep. Issa opened his own alternative to SOPA for public markup, Project Madison participants came in droves with surprisingly specific legal suggestions. For instance, one savvy user noticed that current piracy legislation could mistakenly leave a person who owns a domain name legally responsible for the actions of the website administrator (the equivalent of holding a landlord responsible if his tenant was growing pot in the backyard). The suggestion was included in the updated bill before Congress, representing perhaps the first time that the public, en masse, could have a realistic shot at contributing to federal law purely based on the merit of their ideas.'"

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But whose side are they on? by Black+Parrot · 2012-10-26 05:18 · Score: 2

For example, when "They give politicians scores based on how their votes align with consensus on policy in the tech industry.", are they going to grade them up or down for wanting to increase visas?

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:This should be good by sumdumass · 2012-10-26 05:24 · Score: 2

It will be good until they start grading politicians. The problem is that not all interests in tech will be the same interests as the person grading them. It will become just another ideological ranting before it's done. We have a lot of them already.
What we need is not a grading system but a way to see the history of a politician's votes and any claimed reasoning for it. For instance, I'm for spending money on STEM programs but I wouldn't vote for a bill doing it if it meant funding abortions with tax money or raising taxes. There are other things that someone might find they cannot digest in a bill.