Wishocracy: Solving the Democratic Principal-Agent Problem Through Pairwise Preference Aggregation

Politicians' votes have near-zero correlation with citizen preferences (Gilens and Page, 2014). Elite preferences predict policy outcomes. No mechanism connects citizen preferences to electoral consequences for representatives. RAPPA: Millions of citizens answer simple pairwise questions ("How would you split $100 between these two budget categories?"). Geometric mean aggregation produces population-level preference weights from sparse individual responses. Unlike approval voting or ranked choice, RAPPA captures preference *intensity*, not just what people want, but how much they care. Compare aggregated preferences to each legislator's voting record. Publish Citizen Alignment Scores. Channel campaign resources to high-alignment candidates through Incentive Alignment Bonds. The mechanism achieves three properties no prior system combines: minimal cognitive load (~20 comparisons per participant yields statistical convergence), preference intensity capture, and approximate strategy-proofness.