It’s easy to vote a given way, knowing that other people in other districts will vote a different way. But what if we really had to live with the results of our votes?
Here’s my proposal: In the 2012 Congressional election, any district that votes for a “fiscal-conservative” Congressman gets to live under a “fiscal-conservative” budget thereafter, and any district that votes for a “progressive” Congressman gets to live under a “progressive” budget thereafter. The federal budget will be split in two: the conservatives can draw up their budget for their districts, and the progressives can draw up their budget for their districts.
Would that change your vote, or your likelihood of voting?
What if this election set what kind of budget your district had for the rest of your life? The “No Backsies” Referendum!
OK, that’s probably wrong. What if it were for ten years? Would that make you more or less likely to vote?
What I’m interested in is making voters feel consequences for their votes. I think we assume that we’re all stuck with each other and change is only incremental. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Well, presumably you’d need to distribute the tax burden similarily.
But more generally, I doubt most federal spending is particularly geographically localizable like that. If someone has 50% of their college education funded by federal loans, and then goes on to invent some technology that gets used in ipods or whatever, how do you limit that benefit to certain congressional districts.
It would be much easier and more realistic to devolve back to the states much of the power that the federal government has accumulated over the last century.
Well, this is unworkable in just about every way, but I assume you know that? I mean, if you thought about it for more than 15 seconds. One has images of bridges that are spanking new for exactly 1/2 their length, or the Center for Disease Control stomping out zombie invasions but only up to the county line.
However in a more focused and rational way, you could probably just settle for mercilessly mocking any Tea Party Congress critter who accepts any sort of earmark for their district.