America's next great project

The Right to Honest Government Initiative

A permanent American effort to make honest government service enforceable and increasingly effective.

This page is the story from the front page, written out as one article for people who prefer to read, and for anyone whose browser cannot run the guided version.

Where this comes from

We are a nation of problem solvers and innovators. We have never accepted "that's just how it is."

The strategy is simple. Americans just want better outcomes. And the best way to achieve them is by requiring our government honestly try. That's why Americans are uniting to establish this right.

It's not left. It's not right. It's forward.

The simple idea

Better decisions = better outcomes

Today, officials can make major decisions without honestly showing their work. The right changes that.

Every major decision must show its evidence, the serious alternatives, and the reasoning, in public and enforceable in court.

If a decision cannot survive an honest look at the evidence, it does not stand.

Your doctor already owes you this duty

Your doctor, your lawyer, and your financial manager all owe you a legal duty to act in your best interest. The public officials making the biggest decisions about your life do not. The right makes that same duty law for major government decisions.

Where every piece already works

Courts have reviewed government reasoning since 1946 under the Administrative Procedure Act. Corporate officers, doctors, and lawyers answer to enforceable duties every day. Public records and open-meetings laws already exist in every state.

What happens when they cheat

When dishonest officials serve private interests over the people, they can no longer hide it behind a tidy cover story. They lose their decision power, their office, or both.

When honest officials propose rigorous solutions based on the real evidence of what would best achieve our goals, dishonest officials can no longer block those decisions without proving there's a better alternative. And if they find one, wonderful: government is required to choose honestly between them.

Every consequence requires proof in court, at standards courts already use. Honest mistakes and policy disagreements never reach this process.

What the national study found

In a national study of 1,000 Americans run by Verasight, an independent research firm (September 1 to 9, 2026), 73% said they would vote this right into law. That is the final vote, taken after respondents reviewed the complete design, including how enforcement and review would work. 8.1% said no; the rest were undecided. The study was preregistered before any data came in (osf.io/x5ve6). Wilson 95% interval 70.4 to 75.9 points. Verasight reports a margin of sampling error of 3.1 points for the weighted sample.

How we count explains every number we publish. Walk through the ballot the way a study participant did.

The plan

Three questions, answered straight.

Can this actually become law?

Yes. In about two dozen states, citizens can put a law on the ballot and pass it themselves. No politician's permission required.

That is where this starts: win the first states, prove it works in practice, and let the results make the national case.

The full path, step by step

Three tracks, each making the others stronger. Build the law in public, so the proposal is strong enough to survive scrutiny. Win the first states, where voters can act directly. Make honest service the standard: we invite the public to ask every candidate to pledge to vote for a legal right to honest government service, and a candidate who says no is more likely to lose to one who says yes.

From there the ladder runs: state models, millions of Americans standing together, a national political standard, federal law, and ultimately the strongest lasting protection: a constitutional amendment. The destination is clear. The exact federal path will be shaped by what works.

American reforms have often developed exactly this way. Women's right to vote: Wyoming went first in 1869, the Constitution followed in 1920. Electing your own senators: Oregon showed how in 1908, the Constitution caught up in 1913. Same-sex marriage: Massachusetts went first in 2004, a nationwide right by 2015. History is a pattern, not a promise. The first states are how we prove it.

Is this serious work?

Two years of legal design, now in its sixth major revision, being stress-tested in public. Scholars, lawyers, institutions, and everyday Americans can challenge it, find weaknesses, and help make it stronger before it is ever voted on.

An independent research firm has already tested it with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans, under a preregistered design.

Why we started this

The idea is simple. Americans just want better outcomes. The best way to achieve those outcomes is by making honest decisions based on what would actually achieve them. That's all this is about: major government decisions should have to honestly show their work. Period.

A law like this was never practical before: too complex for any one group to draft, too easy to kill in a back room, too hard to test against the whole country. That has changed. Modern tools let a small team draft and stress-test at a speed that used to take a generation, and open, preregistered research lets every American check the work.

The idea was never the missing piece. The capability was. Now we have it.

What does adding my name do?

It shows how many of us stand behind this. That visible number is what recruits the legal expertise, funds the work, and moves this toward the first state ballot.

A poll doesn't unite the American people by itself. It doesn't collect a signature, improve a draft, or build a state campaign. People do that.

What your name is not

Your name is not a donation, not a party registration, and not an endorsement of any politician. It says one thing: major government decisions should have to honestly show their work, and you want that to be law.

We're inviting the public to be a part of this.

Who is behind this, and who pays

David Jones, founder. Technology entrepreneur and engineer. Five patents; his 2014 Kickstarter raised $3.4 million from 11,855 backers.
Ian Heller, legal strategy. Former federal appellate attorney and constitutional law professor.

Built with a growing team of experts: two years of design, adversarial testing, and national studies.

The Right to Honest Governance Institute is a nonprofit research and education organization organized under section 501(c)(3) (federal tax-exempt recognition application in preparation). It leads the design of the law: the legal research, the adversarial stress-testing, and the national studies.

The Right to Honest Government Action is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization. It runs the campaign to make the right law: this signature drive, the coalition, and the state-by-state path.

Both organizations are members of the Braver Angels Alliance: a network of organizations from across the political spectrum working to bridge the partisan divide and help build a movement for civic renewal.

Both organizations are named, with their EINs, on the trust and accountability page.

Who pays for this?

So far, I have. This effort is founder-funded. It takes no party money, no corporate money, and no anonymous money, and it will not.

What donations fund is published.

Where I stand on party

Our political parties do not represent the American people, and they do not represent me.

No American fits neatly inside a single label. You hold your own mix of beliefs about your family, your work, your money, your safety, and your future. So do I. Squeezing all of that into one of two boxes was never representation. It is a side effect of a two-party system that competes for power.

We are being divided for our votes. In a national study run by an independent research firm, more than nine in ten Americans, across every party, agreed we have a right to honest government service. On the outcomes that matter most, we already agree. Keeping us angry at each other is simply how a broken system keeps us from uniting to fix it.

I believe the right decision on any public question depends on the evidence and on the outcomes it creates for you, your family, and the rest of the country. It should never depend on which party proposed it. That is exactly what this law requires: evidence and honest reasoning on the public record for every major decision, whoever is in power.

So, no. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. And I believe that when public decisions finally answer to evidence, most of the division between the parties will lose its purpose, and so will much of the division between everyday Americans.

The Right to Honest Government is strictly nonpartisan and will stay that way.