Democracy, Straight-Up!
Get ‘Read In’ On The Mission
A DcL: What It Is
The Democracy Straight-Up Project will set up Directly-connected Legislatures in all 435 US Congressional districts. The DcL’s will be open to anyone registered to vote in a given district, and voters will vote directly on any and all legislation that comes before the US House of Representatives.
You can, of course, pronounce DcL as dee-sel. We like to say “We call it a ‘diesel’ because it is the engine of democracy.”
What exactly is a DcL?
Let’s Use an Analogy
If a DcL were a car, right now you would be looking under the hood. For most people looking at a car engine, there is a tangle of wires, odd-looking tubes, electrical doodads, and chunks of cast metal that apparently do something. Despite the complications, most car owners learn how to change the oil and refill the radiator. But that is about it.
And that’s okay! There is no need to look down on a car owner just because they don’t know everything about how a car works. What you really need from a car is for it to get you where you want to go. If it breaks down, there are people whose job it is to help fix it, or the knowledgeable friend to point you in the right direction.
That is exactly how you should think of a DcL. It gets you where you want to go. You want to live in a democracy where your voice is heard, where you can vote directly on legislation, and where your House Rep votes with the will of the voters. A DcL does that. But also, like a car, if you don’t want to go anywhere, you don’t have to use it: it sits in the garage waiting for you, ready to start up when you need it.
If you want to learn more about the issues surrounding a proposed piece of legislation, just fire up the DcL. You can even set it on cruise control! If you want to see how that works, follow this link:
[Link to Learn to Love the Proxy]
Under the Hood
If what follows seems confusing or overly complicated, well, we remind you again that you are looking under the hood. We promise you that, given the goal it must achieve, this is actually the simplest possible articulation. It is a lean, mean, will-of-the-people generating machine!
print(‘It was later than that!’)
A DcL is a Directly-connected Legislature.
- It is a legislature set up by the voters of a US Congressional District.
- The voters participating in their district’s DcL vote directly on federal legislation.
- They can, if they wish, propose new ideas for legislation, and even author bills to be submitted by their House Rep for consideration by the US congress. But, more often, bills will come to them and be presented for their consideration by their House Rep. Throughout this explanation, don’t forget: bills can add to existing law, or they can repeal existing law. If you want to eliminate a law, you have to pass a law to make that happen!
- Any voter registered to vote in a given US Congressional District can join their DcL and vote directly on federal legislation.
- When a DcL is large enough to elect one of its own members as a representative in the US House, that representative votes, bill by bill, with the majority vote of their DcL.
- Setting up the Dcl’s nationwide is the mission of The Democracy, Straight-Up! Project, through its flagship program, the CRCL Initiative.
- CRCL stands for “Connected Representation” and “Connected Legislation.”
A DcL is organized according to a tiered system of merit-based delegation, which we call Connected Representation. We refer to each tier as being ‘forward of’ the one that precedes it.
- Every voter joins a Circle, which is a group of 6 to 12 other voters.
- Members of a Circle should generally agree on most issues, whenever possible.
- Membership in a given Circle is voluntary.
- Members can be voted in and out by a majority vote.
- Members can leave a Circle at any time.
- Every Circle elects one of their own to represent them, called a First Delegate.
- A First Delegate should be able to devote about 4 hours a week to their duties.
- Circle members give orders to their F-Del, who then executes those orders and reports back.
- They do this through something we call a Back & Forth, part of the Claim Your Seat Voting Portal software provided by the DSUp Project free of charge.
- There will be tens of thousands of F-Dels in your district.
- Every First Delegate joins a First Link, which is a group of 6 to 12 other First Delegates.
- Members of a First Link should, again, generally agree on most issues. They should also be able to work together well, since unlike Circles, First Link members will have to coordinate their activities.
- An F-Del’s membership in a given First Link is voluntary.
- Members can be voted in and out by a majority vote.
- Members can leave a First Link at any time.
- First Links meet on a schedule and in a manner approved by their voters.
- Every First Link elects one of their own to represent them, called a Second Delegate (Sec-Del)
- A Second Delegate should be able to devote about 8 hours a week to their duties.
- First Link members give orders to their Sec-Del, who then executes those orders and reports back.
- They do this through something we call a Back & Forth, part of The Claim Your Seat Voting Portal software provided by the DSUp Project free of charge.
- There will be thousands of Second Delegates in your district.
- Every Second Delegate joins a Second Link, which is a group of 6 to 12 other Second Delegates.
- Sec-Dels who are members of a Second Link should be able to work together. They don’t need to agree on everything, but they should respect each other enough to get along.
- Membership in a given Second Link is voluntary.
- Members can be voted in and out by a majority vote.
- Members can leave a Second Link at any time.
- Second Links meet on a schedule and in a manner approved by their voters.
- Every Second Link elects one of their own to represent them, called a Member of the District Assembly (or MoDA for short).
- A MoDA should be able to devote about 20 hours a week to their duties.
- Second Link members give orders to their MoDA, who then executes those orders and reports back.
- They do this through something we call a Back & Forth, part of The Claim Your Seat Voting Portal software provided by the DSUp Project free of charge.
- There will be hundreds of MoDA’s in your district. At this tier, the number of representatives is small enough to actually meet as a body. And there are only two Links between any given voter and the District Assembly.
- Every MoDA in the District Assembly joins a District Caucus, which is a group of 12 to 18 other MoDA’s.
- Members of a District Caucus should be able to work together. They don’t need to agree on everything, but they should respect each other enough to get along.
- Membership in a given District Caucus is voluntary, but only up to a point. Because each MoDA represents thousands of people, no MoDA can be left out of all the Caucuses. In such cases, the House Rep can compel a Caucus to accept an orphaned MoDA. MoDA’s can switch between Caucuses, but they must continuously maintain a Caucus membership.
- There can be no more than ten Caucuses. (This can be changed by a majority vote, as can everything about a DcL, once it reaches a ‘quorum,’ as we define that word, and becomes completely self-governing.)
- Caucuses meet on a schedule and in a manner approved by their voters.
- Every Caucus elects one of their own to represent them, called a Co-Rep or Head of Legislative Caucus (HoLC).
- A Co-Rep should be able to devote 40 hours a week or more to their duties.
- The members of a Caucus give their Co-Rep orders, and the Co-Rep executes those orders and reports back.
- They do this through something we call a Back & Forth, part of The Voting Portal software provided by the DSUp Project free of charge.
- Caucus members give orders to their Co-Rep, who then executes those orders and reports back.
- There will be exactly ten Co-Reps. This is small enough that they can fit in the same room with the House Rep, serving as a kind of legislative cabinet.
- Since there are only ten Co-Reps, each of them automatically belongs to the forward most tier of the merit-based system of delegation (Connected Representation). We call this tier the DcL’s The Council of Co-Reps.
- The Council meets regularly with the House Rep on a schedule approved by the voters.
- The forward most member of the DcL is the duly-elected representative of the district in The House.
- This House Rep is a member of their DcL. They may or may not have been someone who served as a delegate in some tier of the DcL–they could just be a Circle voter. (If they were a delegate, they give up that job once they are elected to the seat.) The House Rep’s job is to serve the will of the majority of the voters of the DcL on an issue by issue basis. As such, they need to be comfortable defending and propagating the will of the majority no matter what position it may take. Thus, the House Rep becomes more like a lawyer defending the interests of a client. Their personal opinion doesn’t need to come into play. To be sure, they will be able to report back to the voters in order to inform their decision-making process, but when all is said and done, the House Rep must adhere to the majority vote.
- They are selected to be a candidate by a simple majority vote of the entire DcL. (Or by some other means agreed upon by majority vote, such as sortition or ranked choice voting.)
- In the general election, every DcL member (even those that did not vote to select this particular candidate) votes for the candidate selected by the DcL.
That’s it! Less complicated, actually, than a car engine.
But still pretty complicated. If you read through all that and understood it, good for you! You’ll probably make a good delegate. If it sounded painfully complicated, good for you! You’ll make a fine, upstanding member of your DcL–a driver of the car, not the engineer or the mechanic.