The state of things

Taxes, schools, water, roads, policing, health care: our representatives decide them for us, from Congress down to the city council and the appointed boards most of us have never heard of. We hand them that power at the ballot box, then mostly lose sight of what they do with it.

Trust has worn thin. Congress's approval rating has sat below 30% for most of the last fifteen years. People feel unheard, and it's hard to prove them wrong, because nobody keeps a record of what constituents asked for.

Source: Gallup, Congressional job approval.

Why representation matters

A representative is a stand-in. When the stand-in drifts from the people they represent, the laws drift with them. That drift is hard to see: voting records are buried in legislative databases, polls are national and quickly forgotten, and campaigns speak in slogans.

The closer a decision is to daily life, the less anyone is watching. City councils, school boards, zoning commissions and county officials shape our neighborhoods with very little public record of how well they listen.

The other split

We usually hear polarization described as the country divided against itself. There's another split that gets less attention: the gap between the public and the people who represent it. Pollarized exists to measure that gap and put it on the record.

What Pollarized will do

• Explain proposals in plain language, from federal bills to city ordinances, with the strongest case on each side.
• Let verified constituents go on record before the vote, only in the places where they live.
• Compare what officials do with what their constituents want, elected and appointed, at every level of government.
• Keep the record public and free, so anyone can see how well they're represented.
• Tell you when it's your turn: elections, ballot measures and the deadlines that come with them.

What we won't do

• Take sides. We're nonpartisan, and every question is written to a public neutrality standard.
• Replace elections. Nothing here is a ballot; when it's time to vote, we send you to official sources.
• Sell your individual opinions or identity.
• Let money change a record or a score.

Your privacy

If you sign up for updates, we keep your email address, your ZIP code if you share it, and the country your sign-up came from. We use them only to tell you about Pollarized and to decide where to launch local coverage first. We don't sell or share them, and every email we send will include a way to unsubscribe.

Where we're starting

With Congress, where every American has representatives and the voting records are public. Then state legislatures, then cities, one at a time.