A rule that cannot be seen cannot be enforced. Every constraint here is checkable by an ordinary person.

A rule that cannot be seen cannot be enforced. The same people who draft the exceptions also draft the footnotes that hide them, and a violation nobody can detect is not really a violation — it is an option.

So every constraint in these proposals was picked partly for how easy it is to check. A ruler across a district map. A calendar against a term count. A single annual number against a bank statement. A revenue percentage against a contract disclosure. None of these require a forensic accountant, a subpoena, or a decade of litigation to evaluate.

That test is doing real work in the design. There are better-targeted versions of several of these rules that I rejected because verifying them would require trusting an agency, a court, or a disclosure regime that the regulated party can lobby. A slightly blunter rule that any journalist, opponent, or curious citizen can check on a Saturday afternoon is worth more than a precise rule that only insiders can audit.

The goal is not perfect information. It is information simple enough that public embarrassment becomes a real enforcement mechanism — because for most of these behaviors, it is the only enforcement mechanism that has ever actually worked.