Thank you for the considered feedback, I will go through over it with an editor I know. Also, if you really like the idea please feel free to write your own post on, or inspired by, Augmented Assembly
Thank you very much for the positive feedback and upvote. I would certainly be willing to edit my post further. Admittedly, I wanted to condense the proposal into a ~5mins read and if people wanted more depth they could view my sources. However, this constraint may have made my writing become overly condensed and loose readability. I will think about your general feedback but I would also be happy to consider altering any specific elements you found to be the least legible.
This is true, and it is very fair to bring up that a nuanced communication pathway does currently exist; however, it is arguably not an effective mechanism. I am skeptical of how "listened to" people who write to their legislator truly feel. Gratification from this act will likely be unreliable and highly delayed. Thus, the main barrier is not so much the effort to communicate, although I certainly don't think that this is a non-trivial factor, but the experience derived from such communication. In an app or website, there could be a level of immediate gratification and challenge from interaction with one's peers. This should make the process feel less isolating, and the knowledge that your viewpoints will be directly incorporated into a potential briefing paper alongside a community of others with similar beliefs provides a very different user experience than sending an email or letter. I want to note that I certainly agree with you that much of the barrier is the effort needed to critically evaluate an issue, but I would argue that the apathy, malaise, and tribalism preventing this effort are caused by a sense of political isolation, thus fixing the communication pathways may allow for a feedback loop of ever greater engagement.
Agreed