Improving The Republic

I had this idea a couple of weeks back.

Our politicians are respresentatives of the people. As such, they should be listening to them.

The founding fathers set up the nation as a republic, not a democracy. They did this because the details of government are too many for the general public to be sufficiently knowledgeable about to cast a reasonable vote. So instead we elect representatives with similar standards to represent our vote in federal issues.

The concept is good, but the system has a huge and fatal flaw. This system only works if the representatives have the integrity to represent his/her electors, not his/her personal interests. Our congressmen and senators should vote for the people, not for themselves. But how, when there are so many people, can we possibly know enough about our electees to judge their true character to make a wise choice.

I don't think an elected representative should compromise his or her moral beliefs to vote for lower standards for his/her people. But they should take into strong consideration the informed opinion of his/her electors.

So here's my idea. I would like to choose a representative that would set up a website, maybe a blog, on which you would explain the significant issues (don't waste your/our time giving the details of little things), explain your personal decision on that particular issue and why, add a poll for users to vote on the issue, allow comments to your explanations and read them. You can't base your decision on the results of the poll because the results can be manipulated, even with strong internet security. But it should be able to give a general idea of the public's perception on the issue. The comments should give a more accurate sense of the public's opinions. After consulting with interested citizens via the web, the representative will be able to make a choice. That's a representative of the people. Granted, some of the public is not well enough informed to make a good decision, even with the information presented, so the representative shouldn't just vote with the majority every time. But it certainly should be most of the time.

The general issues could be better solved if we lowered the level of decision making to a more local level. Most of the decisions being made by the federal government should be made by the state governments instead. The federal government was originally intended to deal with foreign issues alone. We should revert to that structure and restore the power of establishing policies back to the states. Thus citizens can choose their preferred policies without the high tension levels that are a result of forcing controversial legislations on all people. We would have to resolve inter-state policies, probably along the idea that residents of one state cannot travel to another state to participate in that state's programs.

This type of structure would prevent political dissention, and would also allow new policies to be tried without significant social or economic impact on the entire nation. Bad policies, such as California's, would cause citizens and businesses to migrate to states with succesful policies. Thus we bring free market competition to politics as well, pushing innovation and efficiency into legislation, discouraging earmarks and wasteful spending from getting pushed. I like that idea.