Wish You Could Lobby Congress for Moderate Policies and Get Someone to Listen? You Can.

Today's Peacelink from outside Substack takes the opinions of regular people like you and me to legislators . . . with a 100% success record of influencing "common sense" legislation.

From CommonsenseAmerican.org

Happy Friday, and welcome to Peacelinks! This edition of the newsletter highlights the work of the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD) promoting peace and the middle ground in American politics. In the short-and-simple Peacelinks spirit, I want to focus on just one NICD initiative that identifies issues enjoying broad consensus and takes voter opinions on these issues to Congress. Any of us can participate today!

CommonSenseAmerican.org seeks to “bring common sense to American politics” with a system that passes voter preferences to U.S. Senators and Representatives, based on research that “people are less polarized than politicians.”

It works in four steps with “members” composed of any U.S. voters who have signed up online:

1. Members choose an issue that is likely to have broad bipartisan support and on which the organization can have an impact (e.g., ending surprise medical billing; protecting elections; etc.).

2. Staff prepares thorough policy briefs on the issue.

3. Members are randomly assigned to read one detailed brief per legislative session and respond to questions about their views.

4. Members also share their views with their legislators.

When the membership has a strong majority preference on any point, the organization shares this with members of Congress.

It works because the percentage of Democrats and Republicans has remained fairly balanced (about 25% of membership belonging to each party), with a high number (approx. 45%) of Independents. It works because the organization has the ear of bipartisan and moderate members of Congress, who provide detailed information about actual bills under consideration. When voters express their wishes, they are making recommendations that legislators can act on immediately.

https://www.commonsenseamerican.org/

In three years of activity, Common Sense American has logged three successes, influencing the final version of legislation to:

• End surprise medical billing (2020)

• Support national infrastructure (2021), and

• Support peaceful transitions of power (2022).

As of this writing, members are ranking legislative issues to choose for this year.

Instead of fighting about high-profile, ideological and divisive issues, CommonSenseAmerican members share opinions about issues they think can achieve bipartisan support and have an impact.

Does extremism in American politics get you down? Are you worried about our democracy? Check out the CommonSenseAmerican website to learn more about what you can do today to help Congress write legislation that has the broad support of Americans across ideological and party lines.

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