People's Assembly
A second axis of representation. Geographic representation tells us who lives where, and assigns one set of representatives to handle every issue across that geography. The People's Assembly proposes a complementary structure: representation organized by what a law concerns, not just where it applies.
Example: PA-3
The very first steps for thirteen issue domains (about half of those conceptualized) were taken with an AI-driven workflow. The idea was to map power from legal foundation to constituent experience. In theory, this methodology can produce an analysis of 'gaps in representation', when the laws and regulations are and are not working for the peoplle. The information should not be trusted without human verification, but there is a lot of sourcable information to start with and the structure seems to be plausible.
Disclaimer This workflow was developed with AI as an assistant. Claims were based on rigorous sourcing, relying on public data whenever possible. The workflow is public; the law is well-referenced; some statistics include references; claims are not directly referenced to source. Everything needs to be checked and verified by humans before it is considered good information.
Breaking it down
Every place government touches life can be identified (right?). The idea is to map those places into conceptual domains so that people can actually understand the laws and reglations that they are subject to. We must figure out how to design a social compact that we all understand. In the assembly domains, each area is an opportunity for someone with passion or topical specialization to organize members of the public to build expertise, communicate, and provide the kind of sustained citizen representation that a single geographically-elected representative simply doesn't have time for across three quarters of a million people and dozens of legal areas.
This isn't a replacement for geography. It's an addition. District reps represent place. Topical reps represent depth. Both together is the model.
Why X number?
The number isn't sacred. The aim is comprehensive coverage. If a area is missing — if government does something significant that doesn't fall into one of the existing areas — the map isn't yet honest, and the assembly has a gap. The coverage will grow.
How specialization works in practice
The assembly is a long-term proposition. In the near term, just try to learn more about one law that affects you.
The PA-3 application
This project applies a People's Assembly framework to Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of Philadelphia county. I started by thinking about possible ways to classify ares by discrete laws, regulations, and implications for constituents. In theory, a People's Assembly framework could be applied in any district and it might look different. The idea is to break down the system into more manageable subsets that the public can meaningful engage with. In turn, a representative for the district gains a highly effecient constituent feedback system and real human connection. This type of transparency allows for greater representation and accountability, as well as a cumulative public record. For some areas that I thought might be most important for the constituents in PA-3, I developeed a methodology and started to document what the law says, how it actually runs in the district, and where the two diverge.
The methodology applies five lenses (statutory architecture, administrative implementation, constituent experience, gap analysis, and statutory-vs-administrative durability) with rough standardization. Read the methodology in full →
In theory, anyone could propose legislation and engage in an iterative process - on the public record - to integrate (or not) the proposal into a current set of legislation that is held by a party or representative. Representatives can and should keep their legislative platform public and engage with constituents about the details of their policy proposals. I started to think about my priorities as an example that you can see here).
Other domains
The remaining thirteen domains are in the project's framework but not yet under analytical pass. Several need methodological adjustment before the current approach could be applied; others are amenable but unscheduled. Click a name to jump to its short note.
- Agriculture
- Arts & Sciences
- Civil Rights
- Digital Infrastructure
- Election Law & Democratic Process
- Emergency Management
- Energy
- Foreign Policy & International Relations
- Gambling & White-Collar Crime
- Government Operations
- Historical & Public Records
- Identity & Legal Status
- Public Safety & Justice
Agriculture
USDA programs, farm policy, conservation, agricultural labor, the field-to-loading-dock layer. The standard methodology likely fits with one structural-distinctness observation — agricultural regulation operates on a different geographic logic (commodity regions, watersheds) than the city/state/federal layering most other domains use. Pass scheduled after methodology lock.
Arts & Sciences
Public funding and infrastructure for the arts, the sciences, and the public communication of both — NEA/NEH, NSF/NIH, public broadcasting, research universities qua research, public libraries qua repositories. Methodology fits; awaiting analytical pass.
Civil Rights
The cross-cutting anti-discrimination enforcement architecture: DOJ Civil Rights Division, EEOC, HUD FHEO, ED OCR, HHS OCR. Awaiting methodological adjustment — the project's standard approach analyzes a domain on its own institutional and constituent-experience terms, but Civil Rights is constitutively cross-cutting; its substantive provisions live in other domains, and the enforcement architecture needs its own analytical shape. Public-facing brief drafted; substructure cycle follows methodology lock.
Digital Infrastructure
FCC and state PUC architecture for broadband, telecommunications, public digital services, the public-private edges of digital infrastructure. Methodology fits; awaiting analytical pass.
Election Law & Democratic Process
Voting Rights Act, NVRA, HAVA, state election administration, voter registration, redistricting, campaign finance, ballot access, election security. Awaiting methodological adjustment — election law's federalism is inverted from the project's default; the federal floor preempts state-by-state variation in ways the standard layered approach doesn't capture cleanly. Public-facing brief drafted; substructure cycle follows methodology lock.
Emergency Management
FEMA, state and local emergency apparatus, disaster preparedness, response, recovery, mitigation. Methodology fits; awaiting analytical pass.
Energy
FERC, PJM, state PUC, utility regulation, energy transition policy. Methodology likely fits with one observation to surface during substructure — the energy system's federal/regional/state layering doesn't align perfectly with the federal/state/local default most other domains use. Pass scheduled after methodology lock.
Foreign Policy & International Relations
Diplomacy, foreign aid, international agreements, military action abroad. Awaiting methodological adjustment — the project's federal/state/local layered approach produces empty state and local sections for this domain, where authority sits almost entirely at the federal layer. A representative-action lens may suit better in a separate project.
Gambling & White-Collar Crime
Casino and gambling regulation, financial crime, securities fraud, public corruption. Methodology fits; awaiting analytical pass.
Government Operations
Civil service, procurement, internal transparency, inspector-general system, FOIA architecture. Methodology likely fits with one structural-distinctness observation — this is the meta-domain shaping how every other domain implements, which makes in-domain analysis a different shape than the others. Pass scheduled after methodology lock.
Historical & Public Records
FOIA, archives, the census, historical preservation, transparency law. Methodology fits; awaiting analytical pass.
Identity & Legal Status
Citizenship, vital records, immigration, legal personhood, identification systems. Awaiting methodological adjustment — the project's standard federal/state/local layered approach doesn't capture the population-fragmentation effects that drive this domain's lived experience, where the same statute applies very differently depending on documentation status.
Public Safety & Justice
Policing, prosecution, corrections, courts, parole and probation, national security. Substructure work in progress; six methodology revision categories surfaced from the first cold-start cycle. Awaiting methodology lock so revisions can be absorbed before the analytical pass resumes.
Tools & references
A descriptive map of every park, recreation center, pool, playground, trail, and community garden inside PA-3 (and a 2-mile buffer). Live-fetched from OpenDataPhilly. Used by several domain analyses as a shared reference.
Open the parks & open space map →
What happens when one player wins? Three concepts for visualizing income distribution at scale: the bell-curve myth drawn to scale, real-income-growth-by-percentile-band over time, and a physical-metaphor view (football field vs. house). Useful for thinking about the distributional findings in Finance & Taxation.
Open the income visualizations →