The system would be gamed by the politicians.

Insert language you know will never get enough votes

Don’t strike out but add language to make it useless

Plus the bill sponsor often makes changes others ask for, so the true author isn’t noted

It would be a mess and ignored by the public after a while

Same. What I would like to see is Git for non-technical users, built as a public platform that is open source, hosting this.

I do think there are some Markdown-based open source projects that might fit the bill.

We don’t need version control for legislative bills. We need journalists that track down who tried to insert what, summarize it, and present it to the public with context. That would satisfy the oversight purpose without getting lost in technicalities.

Our problem is that the press isn’t doing their job, not that legislation doesn’t have a commit graph. The latter, even if it existed, would not fix the former.

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