When some garbage legislation is enacted (like this or this), democracy requires knowing who did that shit so we know who to vote out of office.
When a relatively good piece of legislation is enacted, it’s obviously also conducive to democracy to know who we need to keep in office, as well as who cares when a good law is not being upheld.
Why is this info buried or non-existent? I don’t think the EU is entirely incompetent about recording things. I seem to recall coming across a meeting minutes document that detailed who said what. But that shit is buried. It’s nowhere near the publication of the law. You fetch a PDF of the law in your preferred language, and this is all the attribution you get:
Done at Brussels, 27 April 2016.
For the European Parliament
The President
M. SCHULZ
For the Council
The President
J.A. HENNIS-PLASSCHAERT
That’s at the end of the GDPR. It’s mostly useless. I want to know who in the end voted to pass EU Reg.2016/679 and who opposed it, for example. I also want to know their parties. Not just yay and nae, but also I want to know who were significant key proponents of the law and who were the biggest opponents. It’s all good for praising and shaming. And it’s good to know who your allies are when taking action against offenders of a good law.
In principle, there is no reason lawmaking bodies cannot be competent enough to trace a single word or phrase in a statute to an individual lawmaker who is most responsible for it.
A US republican voter made the mind-boggling statement “I’m voting Trump because Biden will take away my social security” (WTF- are you fucking kidding me?, I thought) He thought the hell-bent anti-socialism candidate was best for protecting a social program that was literally invented by socialists (in Milwaukee Wisconsin). Indeed, voters are clueless about who supports what. And it’s not exactly their fault. I believe right-wing politicians would be far less popular if more readily accessible transparency were established.
Speaking of the US, there was only ONE person in Congress who was wise enough to oppose the anti-terror bill: Senator Russ Feingold. He said something brilliant:
Excerpt from Russ Feingold
“Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.”.
When I download a law, I want to know not just the proponents and opponents, but significant quotes from the outspoken lawmakers would be nice to have as well.
I would then want to go further, and then take a list of politicians who I regard as mostly detrimental, and collect stats on which corporations fed their campaign war chests by what amounts. Then that info would help direct my boycotts. This particular aspect would be more relevant in the US than Europe, but anyway… just an example of potential use of the info.
I think that’s a brilliant plan. Maybe that’s something that could be built and refined at a local government level, then expanded out? You’ll need to work out a system of responsibility for accurately recording the data.
Yeah it would make sense to start small and local. A large high-level gov would likely be risk averse.
I wonder if it could be somewhat forced by using open data law, which I suppose would only work if the information is collected to begin with. Then the open data request would require them to put the data in a machine-readable format (JSON or XML).
You’ll need to work out a system of responsibility for accurately recording the data.
Politicians are full of shenanigans. They want to face voters and say they are doing right by the voter. Then they want to face corps like Google and reassure them that their interests are respected. They must love being able to say different things to different audiences. The representative would ultimately need to decide how to represent themselves. The reps vote would just be a simple straight fact, but the more granular things like who gets credit for each phrase/clause could be tricky. An admin getting it wrong would have consequences. So indeed you’re right the devil is in the details.