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By Michael Winn
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I’m 86, and I have spent 70 years of it thinking about how evidence should shape public decisions. I began as a 16-year-old high school debater, learning to test an argument before accepting its conclusion.
That habit has left me with a persistent question. How can representatives know what the public understands and authorizes when citizens are rarely given a structured way to reach an informed judgment between elections?
Voting remains indispensable. Yet an election asks people to choose representatives who will decide any matters that might be a subject of a campaign. Polls, town halls, constituent mail, and party organizations can reveal opinions. They do not show whether a community has considered the same evidence, examined competing claims, or identified genuine agreement.
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That distinction matters. Political speeches are not the same as a durable process through which neighbors can be informed about conditions that are of common concern and voice their individual priorities, explain the basis for them, and build consensus for a collective position. Candidates listening can then acknowledge the priorities. Civic agency is thus fulfilled.
The contrast between community needs and federal priorities is amplified by the scale of decisions involved in the federal budget. The White House budget request for fiscal year 2027 proposes $1.5 trillion for national defense. Separately, the Department of Veterans Affairs requests $488.2 billion.
Federal budgets also take shape locally. The Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation’s Defense Spending by State Fiscal Year 2024 report provides a state-by-state view of defense contracts, personnel spending, and grants, illustrating how national appropriations enter local economies.
In my view, those economic ties can also acquire political relevance. Institutions and voters may have practical reasons to support the continuation of certain programs, even when those programs do not fully align with a community’s other priorities. Over time, that tension may influence which arguments receive attention and which candidates appear viable for state and local office.
Our constitutional structure assigns responsibility for representing the public’s interest to Congress. The Constitution gives Congress authority to declare war. The Appropriations Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to authorize the use of public money to be drawn under appropriations made by law. Decisions in Congress are further separated from public knowledge and consent by the Congressional Committee system.
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A Congressional Research Service overview has also observed that members perform several roles and that no formal set of expectations dictates which roles each member must emphasize. Representatives therefore exercise judgment, as they should. The missing element, I believe, is a continuing and credible record of what an informed constituency has considered.
Building such records would have been difficult at scale 10 years ago. Today, digital systems can effectively inform the population of 349 million. That capacity does not guarantee good judgment. Poorly designed technology could amplify confusion and exclusion. We need to start testing civic processes that work.
We cannot easily change the electoral process or constitution, which led me to develop a proposal called Coordinated Action Networks, or CAN. It is intended as civic infrastructure through which a community could review shared source material, challenge claims, consider alternatives, identify disagreement, and record areas of verifiable consensus. The purpose would be to communicate informed public judgment to elected officials before major decisions are made.
Social platforms often reward speed and reaction. A coordinated network would instead attempt to support an ongoing process of information, deliberation, consensus, and accountability. Each participating community would choose its own issues and priorities.
Representatives could not be bound to majority views or remove responsibility to weigh national interests, minority rights, and changing circumstances. It would give them additional evidence for constituents’ priorities. This process could also help communities coordinate around local matters such as water, housing, schools, infrastructure, or emergency preparation.
Democratic agency shows up in the performance of the representative. Elections choose representatives. Communities still need a credible way to develop and communicate informed judgment to guide them. Everyday, people have to push established institutions to do more, demand accountability, and make representation responsive to the people it is meant to serve.
Michael Winn is an author and the founder of Own Your Government and the developer of Coordinated Action Networks, a proposed civic-infrastructure model intended to help communities communicate areas of consensus to elected representatives.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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