FAQs
Currently, any person residing in California can join as a member. Any organization (including nonprofits and private companies) operating in California can join our membership.
Yes!
Individuals must provide an email by which they can be contacted. Individuals must identify the County of their residence.
Organizations must provide a phone number or email by which they can be contacted. Organizations must identify the County where they operate. Organizations must identify their industry.
Any active member can submit a proposal.
Individuals can submit 5 proposals per year.
Organizations can submit 10 proposals per year.
Form
The proposal must be intelligible. The proposal must be stated in 50 words or less. The proposal must propose some action to be taken.
Subject Matter
The proposal must concern an action that can be taken within the State of California. Proposals that concern actions that can be taken in other states or by the federal government, will be rejected as outside the platform’s scope.
There are no other limits on the subject matter of the proposal.
A proposal that is unintelligible, beyond 50 words, or that fails to propose an action to be taken, will be rejected.
A proposal that concerns an action to be taken outside the State of California, will be rejected.
A notice of rejection will be sent to the member who submitted the proposal. The notice will state the basis for the rejection. The member will have three opportunities to cure the defect(s).
No. If the proposal meets the form and subject matter requirements, it will be accepted into the system for processing.
If a proposal meets the form and subject matter requirements, it will be accepted into the system for
processing. A notice of acceptance will be sent to the submitter. The proposal will be made publicly
available on the “Proposals” section of the website. The identity of the submitter will not be disclosed.
Sample Proposal: “Lower my gas prices by getting rid of gas taxes.”
Rejection Notice for Sample Proposal: “The proposal is too indefinite because ‘lower my gas prices’ does not identify any parameters.”
Revised Sample Proposal: “Lower my gas prices by getting rid of [specific] gas tax.”
Each proposal will be consolidated with similar or identical proposals.
Each proposal will be related with a contrary proposal (for example, “x” versus “y”).
Each proposal will then be sent out in a list with other proposals to the membership of myPolitics for voting.
The membership of myPolitics will vote on which proposals they want to see tried. For example, you may be sent three lists of ten proposals and asked to pick your top two choices from each list.
No. That will be impossible because the entire list of proposals (“master list”) may number in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Instead, we will rely on random sampling to arrive at a representative vote. (The method of random sampling that we employ will be publicly disclosed.) We will break up the master list into smaller lists, which we will then send to our entire membership. In other words, a randomly selected subgroup of the membership (subgroup A) will get lists 1, 2 and 3. Another randomly selected subgroup (subgroup B) will get lists 3, 4 and 5. And so forth. By doing so, we will send the entire master list to the membership for a representative vote.
Only individual members can vote. Organizational memberships cannot vote.
The acceptance of a proposal is just the beginning of the process. In general, a proposal submitted by an individual member will be a rough expression of needs and priorities, but will lack the sophistication, analytical background, and precise formulation of a real law that can be adopted by state or local government. This is where the magic of myPolitics comes in.
We will take a winning proposal (a proposal identified by our membership as a priority through voting) and put the proposal through a rigorous trial like process where attorneys will be hired to advocate for the pro side, attorneys will be hired to advocate for the con side, and attorneys including retired judges will be hired to make neutral decisions about the process.
Pro and con attorneys will be allowed to hire experts to make their cases. The initial proposals will evolve in the hands of the pro and con attorneys as rough proposals are turned into sophisticated, viable solutions. For example, a proposal that is flatly unconstitutional will either die in the system at this point (be dismissed by the neutral attorney) or evolve into an alternative proposal that passes constitutional review.
The end of this process is a trial of evidence and argument that will be transmitted to the entire membership of myPolitics. Although the full trial will be publicly available, a movie version will be sent to the membership for voting. The movie version is a short, entertaining version of the trial, reduced to approximately 0.5-2 hours, which contains only the most important moments of the trial (as proposed by the con and pro attorneys and determined by the neutral attorney).
That will be depend on practical limitations including the budget available to myPolitics and the time available to the membership for viewing. The goal is to try as many proposals as possible.
The initial proposal will evolve into one or more draft laws. The membership of myPolitics will be voting on the draft laws.
myPolitics uses this information to ensure that your proposals are applicable to your county of residence.
There will be upvoting on our platform for any proposal you agree with. You simply click the up arrow next to the title.
For final voting, you will vote after seeing the movie version of the trial. You may vote via our site after logging into your account.
60% or more of the vote will be needed for a draft law to win.
For a draft law to become the actual law in the State of California, one of two things will have to happen.
- The draft law can be turned into a Proposition for the citizens of California to vote upon.
- Elected politicians will pass the draft law into real legislation.
myPolitics is a work in progress. We are carefully studying our options with respect to the two paths identified above. As of now, we make no promises or representations.
Yes. We reserve the right to audit any member of myPolitics to verify that the member is a real person residing in the State of California. The audit may involve a request for ID verification or even an in person meeting. If a member fails the audit, or refuses to participate in the audit, we reserve the right to remove the person as a member.
