Overview
The main idea behind the the policy contest is to overcome structural flaws in the policy setting process that slow it down and result in policies that are less cost effective than might otherwise be obtained. The policy contests requests voters donate to effective policies rather than political parties. Pledged donations flow to qualified candidates from any party that support the policies. The idea is to disrupt the current political funding process so that it becomes more responsive to the electorate and more likely to produce policies that allow effective competion in the global arena.
You can provide feedback on this Policy Contest idea via the link below.
Problems Addressed
The table below explains how the contest seeks to improve upon the current policy setting process.
| Problems | How Contest Addresses |
| The current political process encourages opposition to good policies from the party that did not put forth the policy. | Policies are developed by politically engaged voters outside of the party system. This should reduce partisan opposition and speed policy approval. The policies are developed using structured problem solving and design processes that promote the development of cost effective policies that address significant social problems. |
| The rate of technology change is accelerating the need for new policies. The policy process is not able to keep pace. | |
| Effective policies are needed to compete with foreign countries. | |
| Think Tanks and Lobbying Organizations draft a bulk of policies. These organizations tend to have a single perspective on a problem and as such they may overlook problems with their proposals. When the draft proposals are brought before congress, objections to the policies are surfaced and this increases the cycle time for policy approval. | Voters have the ability to create policy ideas and fund these ideas resulting in potentially higher impact than just voting. Voters have transparency to what their donations are funding. |
| Voters are pushed into ideological tribalism/echo chambers | The contest promotes discussion between team members with opposing views. This provides more accurate facts and broadens understanding of the other sides view points. |
| Voters are by and large excluded from the policy setting process. They feel they have no impact on the political process and become apathetic. | Voters can play a more influential role in the political process either by drafting policies or by pledging support to policies that align with their priorities. |
| Politicians are not experts in the large array of social issues they will be asked to deal with. Typically legislators come from education backgrounds that don’t teach analytical structured problem solving methods. | The contest teaches structured problem solving and structured design skills to a group of people that are likely to go on to political careers. The contest teaches how to facilitate constructive conversations between people that hold differing opinions about how to solve a problem |
| Voters and Corporations have to spread donations around between multiple candidates in the hope of gaining support for their positions | Voters and Corporations can concentrate donations on policies that are important to them. |
Overview of the Contest Structure
Policy teams compete for prize money by defining policies that address significant social problems. Team members should have diverse political viewpoints. The teams draft a policy proposal to address a significant social problem in a cost effective manner. During the contest teams debate with other teams and receive feedback from coaches and judges. This helps to improve the policy and broadens public awareness as to effective ways to address significant issues.
Support
Teams are provided with guidelines for holding respectful discussions with teammates of an opposite view. Guidance on structured problem solving and structured innovation techniques is provided.
Criteria
The policy should address a significant social problem in a cost effective manner. It should appeal to both sides of aisle. The problem addressed should be clarified with root causes identified and metrics for assessing effectiveness of the policy defined. Data and analysis should be used to explain how the policy addresses the root causes of the problem. Estimates of the cost effectiveness of the policy relative to other approaches should be presented. Simplicity of implementation is important. The policy should be created by a team with diverse political viewpoints. For example, a virtual team might be combined of younger political science students and older Rotary club members, from different parts of the country. Use of Artificial Intelligence is allowed.
Judging
Judging will be done in a series of rounds. The main elements of the scoring rubric contains 1. Judges assessment of the policy vs. the contest criteria listed above. 2. The dollar value of voter pledges the policy proposal attracts. 3. The total volunteer time of voter pledges the policy proposal attracts. 4. The number of legislators that propose support for the policy proposal.
The contest will be conducted in rounds with local winners advancing to regional and then to national contests.
Funding politicians
To receive funding, candidates from any party can apply by submitting documentation showing that they actively support the policy. The candidate funding process is double blind. Voters do not know which candidates their pledged dollars might go to. Candidates do not know which voters pledged dollars or how many dollars are pledged to a given policy. Once candidates have pledged, voters are informed of the supporting candidates, and the voter can chose the candidates they send the pledges to. This double blind process complies with the anti-quid pro quo requirements of campaign finance law.
In the contest policy menu above, an example contest submission for healthcare has been drafted. It provides examples of the type of submissions desired. Because of time constraints, this examples does not include some of the more detailed items that would be included in a real submission.
The draft policy have links to a survey that will give readers a better idea of how the policy contest will work and will allow the readers to provide suggestions to improve short comings in this policy idea.
Promotion
The policy contest will be promoted via a scripted TV show. The show will include regular segments explaining proposals from the policy contest. These segments will help to educate voters on the issues and will be used to recruit pledges to the policy proposals.
Meet In the Middle 