Contents
WePEG1787
We the People’s Principles of Effective Governing
FIVE GOVERNING PRINCIPLES
Truth • Liberty • Government • Economics • Elections
GROUP 1: TRUTH
1: TRUTH
Truth is indispensable to Liberty and self-government. Governing claims must be open to evidence, measurement, challenge, and correction.
__ T1: Public service must be grounded in Truth.
Candidates, officeholders, agencies, election officials, and public employees must distinguish material fact from advocacy and must not knowingly substitute falsehood for fact.
__ T2: Governing claims must be supported by evidence.
Public decisions should distinguish verifiable fact from inference, opinion, prediction, advocacy, and political messaging.
__ T3: Truth is discovered, not created by political power.
No party, officeholder, agency, majority, or ideology acquires authority to make a false claim true by declaring it so.
__ T4: Government must make material public information transparent and auditable.
WTP must be able to examine the facts, costs, assumptions, methods, and results used to justify governmental action.
__ T5: Intentional material deception in obtaining or exercising public power must have consequences.
Knowingly false material statements corrupt informed consent. The remedy must be lawful, proportionate, and consistent with constitutional protections, including freedom of speech and due process.
__ T6: Government must measure outcomes, not merely intentions or activity.
Claims of success should be tested against stated objectives, actual results, costs, alternatives, and unintended consequences.
__ T7: Serious civic disagreement should be resolved by better evidence and reasoning.
Labels, slogans, emotional manipulation, censorship of lawful disagreement, and factional loyalty are not substitutes for proof.
__ T8: Every claimed Law of Nature or Governing Principle must survive examination.
A principle should be stated as a Natural Law only when its cause-and-effect relationship is strong enough to withstand evidence, experience, measurement, and hostile review.
GROUP 2: LIBERTY
2. LIBERTY
Liberty is the starting condition of WTP. Government receives limited delegated authority to protect equal Liberty and Rights under law; it does not create them.
__ L1: Government exists to protect Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Government can only protect the freedom to pursue Happiness; it cannot promise, manufacture, or distribute Happiness itself.
__ L2: WTP are sovereign and government authority is delegated.
Constitutions, laws, and elections delegate limited authority to officeholders; public officials do not own the power they exercise.
__ L3: WTP retain Rights beyond those expressly listed in the Constitution.
The Ninth Amendment expressly rejects the inference that enumeration of certain Rights denies or disparages other Rights retained by the people.
__ L4: WTP must remain broadly free to act lawfully without unnecessary government restraint.
WTP should remain free to speak, worship or not worship, assemble, associate, own property, form families, work, create, inquire, exchange, and pursue lawful goals.
__ L5: One person’s Liberty is bounded by the equal Rights of others.
Liberty does not include a right to use violence, fraud, coercion, theft, or other unlawful conduct against another person.
__ L6: Religious Liberty belongs equally to believers and nonbelievers.
Government should neither establish religion nor penalize lawful belief or nonbelief, and should not compel ideological (progressivism, communism, etc.) or religious affirmation as the price of citizenship.
__ L7: New technology does not eliminate existing Rights.
Technology may change how a Right is exercised or threatened, but it does not eliminate the underlying Right. Speech remains protected when communicated electronically, and privacy against unreasonable government searches remains protected when personal information is stored digitally.
__ L8: Meaningful consent requires the government to remain accountable and reasonably close to WTP.
Moving decisions unnecessarily farther from the people affected weakens practical consent, knowledge, and accountability.
__ L9: Liberty releases the distributed knowledge and creativity of WTP.
Free people working, creating, exchanging, associating, and solving problems possess knowledge and experience no centralized institution can fully reproduce.
GROUP 3: GOVERNMENT
3. GOVERNMENT
Government must have sufficient lawful authority to fulfill its legitimate responsibilities, while all power remains bounded, accountable, and subject to practical controls against abuse.
__ G1: Government exists to serve WTP and secure Liberty.
Public institutions have no independent interest superior to the people whose delegated authority they exercise.
__ G2: All governmental power requires the consent of the governed.
Consent must remain meaningful through constitutional limits, representative accountability, lawful elections, transparency, and the ability to remove officeholders.
__ G3: Government must control the harmful effects of parties without destroying Liberty.
Federalist 10: The causes of faction cannot be removed without destroying Liberty or human diversity; republican government must instead control the effects of faction and protect the public good and the Rights of other citizens.
__ G4: Government should act at the closest competent level.
Local, county, state, and federal authorities should be used according to constitutional responsibility, competence, scale, and the need to preserve meaningful accountability.
__ G5: Government functions should not be unnecessarily duplicated across levels of government.
Higher levels should not absorb functions merely because they possess greater resources or authority when a closer, competent level can perform them effectively.
__ G6: Government should use no more power than necessary to perform a legitimate responsibility effectively.
Too little government permits disorder; too much government suppresses Liberty. Legitimate responsibility, necessity, and measurable effectiveness define the proper balance.
__ G7: Federal power must be tied to authority granted by the Constitution.
Necessary and Proper is instrumental to enumerated powers, and Supremacy determines which valid law prevails; neither creates unlimited federal authority.
__ G8: The federal government must remain limited to constitutionally delegated powers.
Federalist 84: Hamilton argued that the proposed Constitution granted limited powers and warned against language that could imply powers never granted. The latter Tenth Amendment states the reservation principle expressly.
__ G9: Governmental power must be divided and checked to prevent concentration.
Federalist 9 identifies the separation of powers, legislative checks, independent courts, and representation as improvements in republican government. Federalist 51 explains how the internal structure must enable the departments to keep one another within their proper places.
__ G10: Constitutional limits must be backed by practical controls against encroachment.
Federalist 48: Madison warns that power is encroaching by nature and that mere “parchment barriers” are insufficient; the departments need practical constitutional defenses against one another.
__ G11: Every governmental power must have an effective control against its abuse.
Federalist 51: Government must first be enabled to govern and then obliged to control itself. Constitutional means and institutional incentives should make ambition counteract ambition.
__ G12: Emergency power must remain temporary and reviewable.
Crisis conditions may justify extraordinary action, but emergency authority, spending, and restrictions require explicit limits, continuing review, and a defined path to termination.
__ G13: Public power and public resources must be treated as a trust for WTP.
Bribery, self-dealing, undisclosed conflicts, pay-to-play arrangements, political spoils, and misuse of public resources violate the fiduciary character of public service.
__ G14: Government must conduct WTP’s business transparently.
Material legislation, spending, contracts, grants, conflicts, assumptions, and performance information should be visible and auditable except where a legitimate constitutional or security interest requires confidentiality.
__ G15: Material government decisions must use relevant demonstrated competence.
Representatives are decision-makers, not universal experts; material decisions should identify the relevant expertise, evidence, and sources relied upon.
__ G16: Representatives must remain dependent upon WTP and subject to the laws they enact.
Federalist 57: The constitutional aim is to select rulers with wisdom and virtue and then keep them accountable through dependence on the people and common participation in the laws they enact.
__ G17: Presidential power must remain executive, limited, and accountable.
Federalist 69: Hamilton distinguishes the elected, impeachable President from a hereditary monarch and emphasizes that major powers over war, legislation, treaties, and appointments are divided with Congress or the Senate.
__ G18: An independent judiciary must enforce the Constitution without becoming sovereign over it.
Federalist 78: Independent courts are essential to a limited Constitution and must treat acts contrary to the Constitution as void; Hamilton expressly rejects the inference that this makes judges superior to the legislature or to the people.
__ G19: Government programs must be measured by results and corrected when they fail.
Programs and institutions should state their authority, purpose, cost, responsible office, measures of success, and consequences when results do not justify continuation.
__ G20: Constitutional violations require continuous controls and lawful means of correction.
Federalist 50: Periodic appeals to the people are not an adequate substitute for continuous constitutional controls that keep departments within their bounds. Article V separately provides the lawful process for changing the Constitution itself
GROUP 4:ECONOMICS
4. ECONOMICS
The government cannot repeal Economics. Economic policy changes incentives, consumes scarce resources, creates visible and unseen costs, and produces consequences that must be measured.
__ E1: Economic policy must be judged by measurable results and cause-and-effect evidence.
Intentions do not determine economic outcomes; candidates should identify the expected result, evidence, assumptions, costs, and method of measurement.
__ E2: Economic Liberty protects ownership, work, creation, exchange, investment, and entrepreneurship.
Prosperity depends heavily on WTP retaining broad freedom to use lawful property, labor, knowledge, and capital, and to engage in voluntary exchange.
__ E3: Government should protect lawful competition against concentrated economic power.
Government should preserve lawful entry and competition and examine monopoly power, whether created by private concentration or governmental privilege.
__ E4: Every economic policy changes incentives.
Taxes, subsidies, benefits, regulations, penalties, and guarantees alter behavior; proposals should identify what conduct they reward, discourage, or unintentionally create.
__ E5: Government funding must be judged by whether it solves the stated problem.
Subsidies and spending change incentives and can create dependence or expand the subsidized activity. Success must therefore be measured by outcomes rather than dollars spent.
__ E6: Taxes affect economic behavior as well as revenue.
Tax analysis should account for effects on work, saving, investment, consumption, location, avoidance, and other behavioral responses, rather than relying solely on static arithmetic.
__ E7: Every government benefit has a real cost.
Government cannot make resource costs disappear; taxes, borrowing, fees, regulation, and monetary effects shift costs among people and across time.
__ E8: Economic decisions must count opportunity costs and unseen effects.
Every proposal should identify not only its visible benefit but also what WTP, businesses, communities, or future taxpayers must surrender or forgo.
__ E9: Major economic policies must identify and measure unintended consequences.
Policy design should identify foreseeable secondary effects and include measurement capable of detecting consequences that were not predicted.
__ E10: Government spending is an input; results are outcomes.
A program should not be judged successful because money was appropriated, employees were hired, or activity occurred; the relevant test is the measurable result.
__ E11: Government must compare realistic alternatives before major spending.
A proposal should compare realistic alternatives, including private, local, state, charitable, competitive, or no-government options where applicable, and justify the chosen approach by expected results and full cost.
__ E12: Public money is held in trust for WTP.
Waste, duplication, obsolescence, favoritism, and programs that no longer justify their cost should be corrected or ended rather than automatically funded.
__ E13: Government financial reporting must reveal its actual financial condition.
WTP should be able to understand current revenues and expenditures, assets, liabilities, cash flows, debt, long-term obligations, and future commitments.
__ E14: Borrowing does not eliminate cost; it transfers obligation into the future.
Debt should be justified separately from the expenditure it finances, with the future cost and repayment burden disclosed to WTP.
__ E15: Taxation must be understandable, transparent, politically neutral, and consistently fair.
Candidates should state the standard of tax fairness they support and apply it consistently. Rates, deductions, exemptions, and credits should be visible and justified rather than used as hidden political favors.
__ E16: Government should make rules, not economic winners.
Taxes, subsidies, grants, regulation, contracts, and other governmental powers should not be used primarily to confer economic advantage upon favored private interests.
__ E17: Government must account for the self-interest created by public institutions and programs.
Public Choice: officials, agencies, contractors, voters, and interest groups respond to incentives. Continued authority and funding therefore require controls, disclosure, competition where appropriate, and demonstrated results.
GROUP 5: ELECTIONS
5. ELECTIONS
Elections are the mechanism by which WTP give, withhold, and withdraw governmental authority. The system must protect lawful voting and produce an accurate, transparent, auditable result.
__ ELC1: Election law and administration must serve WTP and remain politically neutral.
Rules should protect equal lawful participation and accurate results rather than advantage candidates, parties, vendors, administrators, or factions.
__ ELC2: Every eligible voter must have an equal opportunity to cast one lawful vote in each eligible contest.
Election controls should protect lawful voters from disenfranchisement while preventing duplicate, ineligible, or otherwise unlawful voting from diluting lawful votes.
__ ELC3: Voter eligibility must be verified, and voter rolls must be accurate.
Registration systems should establish legal eligibility, remain accurate and up to date, protect legitimate privacy, and permit appropriate independent verification.
__ ELC4: Every lawful ballot must remain secure while ballot secrecy is protected.
Ballot issuance, receipt, handling, storage, counting, and final disposition require controls sufficient to ensure ballot integrity while preserving the secrecy of the ballot.
__ ELC5: Election materials require a documented and auditable chain of custody.
Records should establish who possessed ballots and other material election records, when, where, and for what authorized purpose.
__ ELC6: Every material election process must be transparent or independently auditable.
Observation and auditability should extend through the material stages of administration, subject to legitimate ballot secrecy, cybersecurity, and personal privacy protections.
__ ELC7: Election technology must be independently verifiable.
No reported result should depend upon hardware, software, algorithms, vendors, or proprietary systems whose material election functions cannot be examined and verified by authorized officials and qualified independent reviewers.
__ ELC8: Voting systems must preserve durable voter-verifiable evidence.
The election system should retain sufficient evidence to establish voter intent and permit an independent audit of the reported results.
__ ELC9: Post-election audits must independently test the reported outcome.
An audit should test whether the reported result reflects the lawful ballots cast, rather than merely repeating the same counting process or relying on the same unverified system.
__ ELC10: Election disputes require timely, evidence-based, lawful adjudication.
Procedures must protect due process while providing meaningful review and remedy before delay makes correction ineffective.
__ ELC11: Election officials must be accountable for the authority entrusted to them.
Duties, access, discretion, disclosure, oversight, records, and consequences for intentional misconduct or reckless failure should be clearly defined.
__ ELC12: Election procedures must protect both lawful access and election integrity.
Lawful voting should be reasonably accessible without sacrificing the controls necessary to ensure eligibility, ballot integrity, custody, secrecy, transparency, and accurate results.
__ ELC13: Election rules must be politically neutral.
Election law and administration should not be designed, altered, enforced, or financed primarily to advantage or disadvantage a party, candidate, faction, or class of lawful voters.
BEST PRACTICE
__ EBP1: Requires a reliable method of establishing voter identity.
The control should establish identity without creating unnecessary barriers for eligible voters.
__ EBP2: Verify citizenship and other legal eligibility requirements before a ballot is accepted.
Eligibility controls should rely on reliable records, follow lawful procedures, and provide a meaningful correction process for eligible voters.
__ EBP3: Maintain accurate voter rolls with regular, lawful reconciliation.
Voter Roll maintenance should address deaths, moves, duplicate registrations, ineligibility, and data errors while protecting eligible voters from improper removal.
__ EBP4: Use voter-verifiable paper records for every vote.
A durable physical record provides evidence independent of software and supports recounts and post-election audits.
__ EBP5: Use ballot authentication and accounting controls.
Jurisdictions should be able to account for ballots issued, received, spoiled, duplicated, counted, rejected, and retained without linking a voter to a secret vote.
__ EBP6: Document chain of custody with sealed containers, logs, and accountable transfers.
Custody controls should make unexplained access, missing materials, or undocumented transfers detectable.
__ EBP7: Permit qualified observers throughout material election processes.
Observation should be meaningful while preserving voter privacy, ballot secrecy, orderly administration, and cybersecurity.
__ EBP8: Make counting and canvassing publicly observable to the greatest practical extent.
Public visibility strengthens confidence when observers can see the process without interfering with it.
__ EBP9: Conduct independent post-election audits before results become practically irreversible.
Audits should use evidence independent enough to test the reported outcome rather than simply reproduce it.
__ EBP10: Requires independent examination and auditability of election equipment and software.
Proprietary claims should not prevent authorized verification of functions material to election accuracy and security.
__ EBP11: Eliminate unnecessary network connectivity from systems that create, store, tabulate, or transmit election data or results.
Where connectivity is necessary, the purpose, security controls, logs, and verification procedures should be documented and auditable.
__ EBP12: Apply strict custody and accountability controls to all remote ballot collection and ballot drop boxes.
Every transfer or collection method should preserve traceability, security, lawful access, and timely delivery.
__ EBP13: Define voting periods and mailed-ballot deadlines clearly in law.
Rules should provide reasonable access while minimizing prolonged custody, ambiguity, inconsistent treatment, and avoidable administrative risk.
__ EBP14: Establish defined pre-election and post-election challenge procedures.
Candidates, voters, and officials should know the evidence standards, deadlines, jurisdiction, and available remedies before a dispute occurs.
__ EBP15: Impose meaningful penalties for intentional election misconduct.
Penalties should be proportionate, enforceable, and sufficient to deter fraud, tampering, unlawful access, destruction of records, and intentional falsification.