Problem: Special interests are corrupting our government by allowing lobbyists to essentially bribe congressmen to get legislation passed.
Solution: Allow citizens to switch their vote to the representative that most closely matches their views.
Allow me to elaborate. In my proposed system, Senators and Representatives are still voted into office. They can propose legislation, debate, be featured on CNN, etc. However, instead of Senator A casting a vote that is weighted the same as Senator B’s vote, I propose each congressman’s vote is weighted toward how many citizens have chosen them as their representative. Further, their compensation is also weighted by how many citizens have chosen to “hitch their wagon” with them.
Citizens are allowed to switch their representative as seldom or frequently as they like. They simply go to a gov website and change their preference online and their choice will be reflected in all future votes. If a citizen does not have internet access, it can be done at the local library.
With 100 senators to choose from, it is highly probable that someone has a voting history that closely approximates your preferences.
Politicians are motivated to vote with the public because they increase their own personal compensation and also increase their power base. Lobbyists might be able to influence a politician, but legislators must make a compelling argument to the public or risk losing influence and getting a pay cut.
“Resolved: That all taxes shall be eliminated in California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida. Furthermore, all federal revenue shall be reserved for the exclusive use of these five, most populous, states.”
If you don’t vote for my resolution, you will lose a bit over a third of the overall voter base. My resolution passes unanimously. A civil war erupts, followed by nuclear holocaust, and all of our grandkids die virgins.
Much as I would enjoy your proposed legislation (as you might judge from my Location), I somehow doubt this would happen. Otherwise, why hasn’t the “Tax the crap out of Rhode Island and the Dakotas” resolution passed yet?
The problem with such a system is that it stifles dissent. Instead of each representative having one vote, those with unpopular views will have even less influence than they do now.
Take for instance the proposed flag burning constitutional amendment. It has passed the House several times in the last ten years, but always comes up one or two votes short in the Senate. Overall, I think it is probably a good thing that dissenting voices are able to stop a rewriting of what constitutes political speech in our country. Under your system, that constitutional amendment doubtlessly would have passed a long time ago, since the American people can sometimes be wrong (gasp!) and those with unpopular views can sometimes be right. The whole point of our form of democracy is that the minority is afforded special protections of their interests, and this new system would gut that.
I think you would need to first make a case for how lobbying is bad.
The world is dependent on corporations for their livelihood as well pretty much 99% of all technological innovation and distribution. And yet a majority hates these companies and would love to tax them into non-existence and screw them over any chance they could get.
So while I can see there as being an advantage to having a better method than bribery to preserve rationality against popular and fickle opinion, I don’t see any advantage to dumping it till we have something to replace it.
And overall if you want to drop lobbying, wouldn’t it be easier to simply outlaw it?
I think the dissenting voices will still be heard. And if debate sways one of the more powerful representatives, then the amendment is stopped. But if the flag burning ban passes, then it reflects the will of the people.
Sorry, I didn’t intend to be taken literally. My fault.
What I’m saying is that the founding fathers gave us a republican (note small “r”) system of government and not a democratic system for a reason.
We should avoid a tyranny of the majority, as ravenman hints. Under your proposed system, we would be governed by the lowest common denominator - an aggregate of 300 million-plus people. The founding fathers meant for each region to have not only autonomy, but input into how the country functions as a whole. Who will represent Wyoming in your proposed system? The senators from Wyoming? I don’t think so: they’ll cater to wherever the nationwide votes are.
I don’t mean to totally disparage your idea here, as is so often the trend in threads like these. It has certain merits. But I think the negitaves outweigh them.
Well, each senator must still be elected by their constituency.
Let’s take Barack Obama as an example… a lot of people hear about him and perhaps agree with what he says. If they put their votes behind him, he becomes more influential. But would Barack abandon his native state? Not if he wants to win the next election.
These “tyranny of the majority” arguments don’t really work for me. We have a number of countermajoritarian structures in the US Federal government, and none of those would be affected under this plan: the Amendment process would still require 75% of the states to ratify; there would still be lifetime appointments for Federal judges and we would still have the court system; legislation would still have to pass 2 houses and be signed by the president, and the Bill of Rights would still exist. The Senate could even retain the filibuster if it wanted to.
The major change here is that both houses switch to what is in essence of proportional representation system – since each Congresscritter’s voting share will be tied to the number of people he represents. Ok, so for those two houses, we have a potential tyranny of the majority problem. Many other countries use proportional representation with no problems. I don’t see why switching the houses to what is essentially a proportional system means the other countermajoritarian safegaurds in our government will break down.
The Controvert, I see one potential glitch in your system. Let’s say two Senators have an identical set of political views. They are both going to be courting my vote. How do I choose which one gets it? The Senators now have to court my vote on the basis of something else besides their political views. That means a number of the unpleasantries you are trying to eliminate have the potential to work their way back into the system.
No. The world is dependent on people for their livelihoods. A corporation is one legal structure that people can choose to make money with.
Please provide the poll that shows that a majority of people want to tax companies into non-existence and screw them over any chance they can get. :rolleyes:
Nah. Simply require that, from the moment their candidacy is announced to the moment they are out of office, every single communication a congressman or senator has with anyone outside their immediate family is recorded, and if not directly negatively affecting national security is published on a website immediately.
Yeah, and I didn’t say anything about livelihoods, I talked about technology and distribution. I’ll bet you anything that indoor plumbing, improved farming methods, and the cheap distribution of everything from a variety of rare nutrients to medicines and information has, over the last 100 years, saved more and extended more lives than any other force in the world. And that’s almost entirely due to grubby commerce.
My second example (below) doesn’t necessarily fit, unless you make the assumption that 90% of everyone isn’t a Straight Doper and mostly has no idea what they are talking about. Personally, I’d make that assumption; particularly given the hatred for nuclear energy, you would have to assume that people are voting based on their feelings rather than on hard data.
So now, unless you can make the argument that a majority of the populace is going to research in-depth and vote on important topics, rather than just shooting from the hip–and unless you can make me understand why I should believe that a politician who would have no incentive to vote against public opinion, would do so–I would tend to believe that not having any sort of way for the party who stands to lose out having a way to exert more influence than their vote-count, would be something dangerous.
And I think that if you look at the automobile industry in the US, you’ll get a fairly good idea of what happens to innovativeness, work ethic, and competitiveness when the average worker gets more of a say in how many hours he should have to work and how much he should be paid for that, than he is really in a position to understand. He’ll generally think that he’s entitled to a lot more than is feasible, and that “the company is just being evil and stingy” by not giving it to him and that there couldn’t possibly be real world reasons–like being able to continue employing him at all without going belly up or moving the job to China.
I mean, yeah, perhaps my impression is wrong, but I would be fairly doubtful of it.
You choose the one that you believe will vote as you would on issues. You can determine this by looking at the voting record. If they both vote the way you do, then either one achieves the goal of representing you. As for courting your vote, I would argue that is a good thing. I’m not sure exactly what unpleasantries you are describing. Suppose a lobbyist pays one of these candidates to help a corporation pollute the environment. If you want to protect the environment, you could switch your representative after you discover they are voting that way.
The lobbyist becomes a peddler of votes–essentially acting as a 3rd party broker for other peoples votes. He lobbies the congressmen and he lobbies me at the same time. Now, I like perks and free meals as much as the next guy, but this is a potential problem for your system (although under are system currently, you can’t pay people directly for votes, but neither can you pay senators directly for their votes either and lobbyists find all sorts of ways around that)
Go read your own post again and tell me the word “livelihood” doesn’t appear. All of these things you mention–including technology and distribution–are the result of people doing things. Corporations are one way that people can do things. Joint Ventures are another. Marriages are another. You are simply trying to equate valid debate over what the rules for a given legal structure should be with an attack on “grubby commerce.”
Not one thing in this quoted section says that people want to tax business into non-existence or screw them any chance they can get. True, most people don’t have a complete grasp of economics, but they intuitively understand negative externalities and information assymetry problems. Everything you’ve quoted here sounds as if people favor economically efficient markets. Corporations don’t have a right to do anything they want to do–because people don’t have a right to do anything they want to do.
I have no idea what point you’re trying to make here. Are you trying to equate support for doing something about global warming to an attack on corporations? If global warming is caused by humans, then that is a huge negative externality problem, and forcing companies to bear the cost of global warming is economically efficient. Otherwise, you’ve essentially forced all the people living in areas that will be adversely affected by global warming into subsidizing corporate activity. If you want to claim that most people want to tax corporations out of existince, should I claim that you want to force everyone to subsidize private corporations?
Of course I never made the argument that a politician would vote against public opinion. I made the argument (in a separate post, not directed at you) that we would still have countermajoritarian structures in the system proposed by the OP.
The only people who lose influence under the OPs system are people who would lose out because this is essentially a shift to a representational legislature. What corporations have to do with this is beyond me, since corporations are not the public. As I have stated before, corporations are a legal structure that people use to accomplish a goal. This is like saying marriages are losing political influence or adoptions are losing political influence.
Please, tell us what the amount of say a worker should have? It’s not economically efficient for companies to externalize costs onto workers. Workers have bargaining problems when dealing with companies. There are transaction costs to switch jobs.
There’s another possible explanation here, which is that companies are able to externalize their costs onto the Chinese population. So, the company’s move to China is simply creating economic inefficiencies in both China and America.
The real answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. But everything you’ve posted here indicates to me that you have a pro-corporatist slant, and you don’t care about either economic efficiency or capitalism. If you want to convince me that corporations should be allowed to create highly inefficient markets, you’re going to have to actually make an argument for economic inefficiency that’s better than telling me that corporations should pay workers at economically inefficient pay levels.
Poor. Most people I am associated with make absolutely no attempt to study issues and critically examine what occurs in Washington and the interrelation of the three branches. Take as a example the current issue over illegal aliens. Not to hijack the thread, but look at how many people incorrectly equate ILLEGAL immigration with ALL (including legal) immigration when lambasting their opponants position (perfect strawman arguments). Hell, Geraldo Rivera is calling the backlash against illegal immigrants “Immigrationism”.
Now I’m not advocating limiting voting to only those people that can pass a basic civics test (“Write an essay on how the War Powers Act affects Congress being the sole government entity able to declare war.”) but I would point out that this system is set up for demagoguery.
THE REPUBLICANS WANT TO GET RID OF ILLEGAL ALIENS BY CLOSING THE BORDERS! REGISTER FOR ME AT www. congress. gov/~nehemiahscudder
They’ll still be heard in the same way the Greenpeace or the John Birch Society is heard. You’re literally proposing a system that would reduce the power of people who aren’t following the weekly whims of the American people. And your dismissal about “its the will of the American people anyway” ignores the point that the Constitution deliberately sets out a government that is supposed to be somewhat insulated from momentary passions of a public that doesn’t always study the issues at hand.
Yeah, they’re not effected in the sense that they’re not stricken from the Constitution, it’s just that anything done by a vote in Congress is rendered silly by the voting scheme. Do you agree or not that the flag burning amendment would be law now if the vote took place under this system? And you recognize that no judge could strike it down? And that there’s also the chance of the opposite – that bad legislation could be passed with, say, the support of 20 popular Senators and a minority of the House? I wonder what Joe McCarthy could have done if he had leveraged his popularity to have the voting power of multiple Senators. I bet he could have ruined more people’s lives in pursuit of phantom communists. Or maybe a minority of Senators could pass the Lou Dobbs End Trade with China Act, since probably a lot of Americans could get behind that, to hell with the consequences.
No, this shares only a superficial connection to proportional voting. Proportional election systems serve to generally overrepresent minority viewpoints: of course the communists and greens and reactionary parties like proportional voting systems, they benefit from it!
But this system is asking a congressman to serve two masters: the will of the electorate who sent him there, and the national mood which governs how much his vote it worth. That, if anything, would tend to push representatives to play to the passions of how the majority of Americans feel on any particular issue, as opposed to using their judgment. It would encourage demagoguery and fanning public passions to create a frenzy over particular issues so that those who take a popular stand on an issue would have more power, at least in the short term. That’s the opposite of what proportional representation is supposed to encourage.
I think that would also actually serve to increase the power of lobbying agencies like the AARP, NRA, American Legion, etc. If the point is to stop making elected representatives kowtow to the NRA on every gun control issue, just think of the threats that the NRA will be able to make under this system: “Senator, if you don’t vote to allow unregistered concealed carry laws nationwide, we’re going to mobilize our members to strip you of your voting power.” Or the AARP could use the same argument to increase Social Security spending despite solvency problems.
The implicit premise of the OP is that groups like the NRA or AARP are dangerous because they’re able to mobilize their members to contribute and vote the way the organization wants them to, and therefore they command a power that’s much greater than the mere number of members they have would otherwise indicate. While the OP couches this in terms of shadowy lobbyists representing corporations, it’s just a plain fact that the NRA has more sway in DC than does GE or Lockheed Martin. If you’re looking to limit the power of special interests, you need to design a system that doesn’t play into the hands of the organizational powers of the groups whose influence you’re trying to roll back.
The first logical step is public funding of campaigns. Tinkering with the power of elected representatives rather than the power of the campaign contribution is attacking the problem from exactly the wrong end.
Lazy and stupid people would not bother changing their votes unless there was a major issue they vehemently disagree with. But that’s okay, it’s how my system system works and those same people cause a problem in the current system. Other folks will change their votes, for whatever reason. It could be because of issues, demagoguery, or because someone’s haircut is more appealing. But that’s just politics and doesn’t invalidate the points I’m making.
Ok, now the complaint in the other direction. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t anticipate millions of voters switching representatives willy nilly. You certainly could, but most people would choose someone that votes closely to themselves and trust that person to continue to vote that way.
I think the public would tire of that quickly. Demagoguery on hot button issues might work a few times, but it would just get people to choose representatives that more closely align with their own preferences. In fact, demagoguery is a good thing because it raises awareness: Senator X has voted 17 times in favor of issue Y! Switch now if you disagree!
On the flip side, if the senator holds firm, he gains favor with all the people who disagree with those issues. Lobbyists lose the power to pay off a handful of men, and instead, must mobilize millions of voters? Let me repeat myself: that ain’t a bad thing.