ALEC is a conservative group that writes model legislation in the U.S., and hundreds of their bills have been enacted in different states. Many of them are harmful. But you have to admire the model in some ways because it’s working. It saves legislators research, it propagates the “best” policies and implementations from their view rather than relying on individuals to figure it out themselves, and (presumably) avoids some legal challenges by involving experts at the beginning.
Is there a progressive version? I’ve come across one example, SIX, which doesn’t quite seem to fit the description because they only keep a library of legislation from various states, they don’t write bills from scratch.
I got to thinking about this because while many of us support various ideas, it’s not always clear how to put them into action. Something like universal healthcare: are there ways states (or even municipalities or counties) could start to put this into action? I’m not an expert, and frankly most legislators aren’t either. But if we could bring together experts and create model legislation, that would be something we could rally around and demand from our elected officials. This applies to many issues like sustainability, public housing, free higher education, addressing food insecurity, universal basic income, better electoral systems.
The EFF is really just about one topic though (privacy on the Internet, for those of you unfamiliar with their work). I’m sure some other orgs have their own topics they have written model legislation for. ALEC writes for everything on the GOP agenda, and I think that’s what OP was getting at - a universal writer. But I don’t think there is one. Perhaps because the Left is very broad in it approaches to stuff, comparatively? So it’s harder to nail down the language everyone would agree on? Or maybe it’s ideological from the Dem party, that they don’t want that kind of centralized writer for issues that have nuance. No clue, this is a really interesting question from OP.
Not quite. They’re advocates for that and several other technology-related issues, such as opposing DRM and expansion of copyright law, supporting right to repair, opposing censorship, etc.