A Better Government Is Possible But The Responsibility Falls On The Voter

Don Hilborn
1 hour ago
7 min read

Updated: 44 minutes ago

We Don’t Need Another Opinion—We Need Receipts

I’m going to say something that sounds obvious, but we don’t act like it’s true: the American people already have the tools to audit power—in real time, with primary sources, and with data that’s harder to spin than a talking point.

Not “what someone said the bill does.”Not “what a clip suggests.”Not “what a paid influencer interprets.”

I’m talking about the receipts: the legislation, the executive order, the regulation, the court ruling, the spending record, the votes, and the money.

And if we start voting like we actually mean it—as The People—we can force the two Parties to compete for us again.

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The leverage is this simple

The two Parties respond to incentives. When we vote emotionally, tribal, and predictably, we remove the incentive to serve us. When we vote like a data-driven block, we create a new incentive:

Move the needle for The People, or lose power—no matter what letter is next to your name.

That’s not “both sides are the same.” That’s not cynicism. That’s accountability.

But here’s the non-negotiable part: we don’t get to call ourselves data-driven if we’re still living on secondary and tertiary sources (commentary, summaries, memes, selective screenshots).

If we want to take control back, we have to do what every serious investigator does:

Start at the source. Follow the chain. Document it.

Receipts are the only anti-bias technology that works

Bias isn’t only “left” or “right.” Bias is also:

· selective quoting

· missing context

· cherry-picked timeframes

· misleading labels

· “translated” conclusions that the original text doesn’t support

Primary sources don’t magically remove interpretation—humans still interpret—but they stop the most common form of manipulation: telling you “what happened” while hiding the document that proves (or disproves) it.

This is what “primary-source-first” means in practice:

· Legislation: read the bill text, the amendments, the final enacted law, and the recorded votes. [1]

· Executive action: read the actual executive order and related presidential documents as published. [2]

· Regulations: read the proposed rule, the final rule, and the agency’s stated rationale; don’t just read headlines about them. [3]

· Court rulings: read the court’s opinion (the actual holding and reasoning), not a hot take. [4]

· Money: trace donations and lobbying through official filings and reputable structured datasets—but always watch for how categories are defined so you don’t get fooled by labels. [5]

And yes—this is work. But it’s also how grown-up power works. If we want adult results, we have to bring adult habits.

The People’s tool-belt is bigger than most realize

Below is what I consider a practical “citizen audit stack”—a way to take politics out of the realm of pure narrative and put it back into evidence.

For federal laws and votes, Congress.gov[6] is the official legislative information site, provided by the Library of Congress[7] using official data feeds from congressional and legislative support agencies. [8] It also has a public API that enables reuse of structured legislative data. [9]

For tracking and alerts, GovTrack.us[10] is a widely used independent tracker (not a government site) run by Civic Impulse, LLC[11], and it’s useful for monitoring activity and organizing information—but the point is to use it to get you to the underlying records. [12]

For presidential documents and executive orders, Federal Register[13] provides browsing and bulk access to executive orders (including historical coverage back to 1937 on its executive order collection page). [14] The Office of the Federal Register[15] also publishes proposed and final agency rules and notices in this official daily journal, and it’s where you can see what the government is doing before it hits your life as a finished product. [16]

For public participation in rulemaking (which most people ignore until it’s too late), FederalRegister.gov integrates a “Submit a Formal Comment” path that routes comments through Regulations.gov[17] or other docket instructions—meaning citizens can participate directly in the record. [18]

For where the money goes (not the rhetoric—the cash), USAspending.gov[19] is the official open data source for federal awards, including categories like contracts, grants, and loans. [20]

For campaign finance and influence visibility, OpenSecrets[21] positions itself as an independent, nonpartisan project tracking money in U.S. politics and providing data and analysis to strengthen government. [22] Under the hood, campaign finance is grounded in official reporting and datasets from the Federal Election Commission[23] (including its public data and API). [24]

But here’s a key “don’t get played” note: even good datasets can be misread. For example, employer/agency labels in contribution summaries can be misunderstood as “the agency donated,” when in reality it may reflect individual employees’ personal donations—misinterpretations like this have fueled misinformation before. [25]

For congressional trading data (which matters because conflicts of interest matter), Quiver Quantitative, Inc.[26] aggregates and analyzes congressional trade disclosures and displays them as searchable activity. [27] Those disclosures exist because public officials have periodic transaction reporting obligations under the STOCK Act framework and related ethics rules, including disclosure timelines (e.g., the “30 days from awareness or 45 days from transaction” structure described in House ethics guidance). [28]

For “how is the real economy doing, not how it feels on TV,” Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)[29] (maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis[30]) provides a massive library of economic time series and an API for programmatic retrieval. [31]

For high-frequency signals about activity, the U.S. Census Bureau[32] publishes experimental and official indicators such as the Census Bureau Index of Economic Activity (IDEA), described as a weighted combination of 15 Census economic series, updated frequently. [33] The Census Bureau also runs the American Community Survey (ACS), an ongoing survey producing annual data used widely in funding and planning decisions. [34]

For national accounts and measures like GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis[35] describes GDP as a comprehensive measure of the U.S. economy and provides detailed economic accounts. [36]

For freight and logistics—often a “real economy” tell—the Bureau of Transportation Statistics[37] maintains freight data programs (including indicators like the Freight Transportation Services Index). [38] The Logistics Managers’ Index (LMI) is published as a diffusion index (with 50 as the expansion/contraction threshold) and is updated monthly. [39] And the Cass Freight Index is described by Cass Information Systems, Inc.[40] as a monthly measure of North American for-hire freight volumes and expenditures, with methodology notes also reflected in its series documentation on FRED. [41]

Build a citizen scorecard that can’t be gaslit

If we’re serious about voting as The People, we need a structure that prevents us from getting hijacked by “the outrage of the week.”

Here’s the model I believe in: a public scorecard whose inputs are verifiable receipts and whose outputs are simple enough to use at election time.

A strong scorecard has three layers:

First is actions, not promises.

· Bills sponsored, votes cast, amendments offered, committees chaired, hearings held (and whether the final law matches what was sold). [8]

· Executive orders and presidential documents issued (and whether agencies actually implement them through rules). [42]

Second is money, not slogans.

· Who funded the campaigns and how that funding changed over time (with definitions understood correctly). [43]

· Who lobbied, on what issues, and where it shows up in rulemaking and legislation. [44]

Third is outcomes, not vibes.

· Key economic and community measures you can agree to track consistently (FRED, BEA, Census/ACS, freight/logistics indicators). [45]

The discipline is the point: every claim gets a link back to the original document. If someone can’t provide that, it doesn’t go on the scorecard.

That’s how you build something that survives propaganda—from any direction.

Pit the two Parties against each other, using data

I’m going to be blunt: the two Parties are not going to “find their conscience” at the same time. Incentives move them—pressure moves them—fear of losing moves them.

So the strategy is:

· Reward any candidate—any Party—who produces measurable improvements for The People.

· Punish any candidate—any Party—who sells narratives and produces nothing in the real record.

· Treat politics like you treat hiring: you don’t hire based on identity; you hire based on performance and verified references.

This is how you turn “lesser of two evils” into “prove you deserve the job.”

And yes, it means sometimes voting for someone you don’t “like,” because they moved the needle the most on the benchmarks The People agreed to track.

That’s not betrayal. That’s leverage.

Vigilance is the price of self-government

Voting every two or four years is not enough, because a huge amount of government power runs through implementation: regulations, guidance, contracting, enforcement priorities, and the machinery of agencies.

That’s why I keep coming back to a simple loop:

· Track what’s proposed (Federal Register).

· Comment when it matters (Regulations.gov).

· Track where the funds actually went (USAspending.gov).

· Track what law actually passed (Congress.gov).

· Track what courts actually held (official opinions and filings).

The public commenting pathway is not symbolic; it is a real mechanism built into the process, and FederalRegister.gov explicitly routes readers to submit formal comments through Regulations.gov and official dockets. [18]

For court receipts, official sources exist too: the Supreme Court of the United States[46] posts opinions upon release (slip opinions and later updated published versions), and PACER[47] provides electronic public access to federal court records (not free for documents, but it is the authoritative portal). [48]

This is the mindset shift I’m calling for:

Stop outsourcing your understanding. Stop renting your beliefs. Start owning your receipts.

Because if The People become a disciplined voting block anchored in primary-source evidence, the two Parties don’t get to “manage” us anymore.

They have to compete for us.

[1] [8] [17] Congress.gov | Researcher Resources

https://www.loc.gov/research-centers/law-library-of-congress/researcher-resources/congress-gov/

[2] [13] [14] [15] [26] [42] Executive Orders