Popular Legislation (or PopuLegis) is a policy search engine, opinion aggregator, and discussion forum. It was created in response to some noticeable failures of our politics:

People are complex, and so are their opinions.

In a two-party system, elections become a maximally reductive form of political expression. PopuLegis is a platform where users can voice their beliefs in all of their nuance by endorsing or opposing individual legislative proposals and specific provisions within those proposals at any level of granularity. This feature is essential for longer bills, like appropriations, where users are likely to support some provisions and oppose others.

The legislative agenda has diverged from the popular will.

Lobbyists fast-track their proposals through an historically unpopular congress, while proposals with broad public support languish without a floor vote or even a debate. One of the goals of this site is to help illuminate the full extent of this gap.

The legislative process is too opaque.

The most consequential legislation is passed in massive, omnibus bills that hide unpopular provisions amidst hundreds of pages of technical jargon to avoid catching the attention of the public. With enough users, the wisdom of the crowd can bring much needed scrutiny to these provisions before they become law.

Please note that, with the exception of your contact information, everything you enter on this site (profile information, votes, comments, etc) is public. If you have any comments or suggestions, you can email them to contact@populegis.org.