And yet they disagree that it is wide open. They don’t trust their government. They don’t believe it looks out for there best interests. Why?

You know the CW about why they are wrong, but please ask yourself why they might be right. Systems have extraordinary power, and folks believe the system is stacked against them. Why do they believe that? Saying it’s laziness avoids asking the question.

In any case, as a hypothetical, let’s say that a poll was taken asking folks who didn’t vote why they didn’t and that the majority of them said they didn’t vote because it was a bother.

But let’s take a step back from that answer. If someone believes they are powerless to effect change in America, what point would they see in saying so? Since they don’t believe they can make a difference, they won’t see much of a point in saying they can’t make a difference. Saying it was inconvenient or that they are too busy is an easy answer (and a popular answer for anything these days) that gets them out of an awkward social situation.

A sense of shame goes with believing that you are powerless to effect change on election day, and shame makes you want to hide, not go out and (cast what you already believe is a useless) vote. For disillusioned folks to believe in American democracy again, someone will have to persuade them (a) that there is something big worth fighting for and (b) that together they can make it happen. Obama is the only politican I know who could maybe pull that off, although I’m willing to be proved wrong. ;-)

I’m sure you’ve worked for some good folks (otherwise I don’t think you would have worked with them), and maybe I’m being naive about this, but the people are always better than the people they elect to represent them (with rare exceptions like Lincoln). It’s never the other way around.

If I’m being cranky about this, :P it’s because my experience with depression has taught me that “laziness” is rarely laziness. Most people most of the time will “bother” to do something that’s necessary or in their best interest. When they don’t, something deeper is going on. Odds are it’s something that takes a helluva lot of work to manage, contain, or hide.

If you think that’s all naive, you need to understand where I’m coming from. For those who don’t know me, I’ve worked in politics for about ten years and I have an MA in campaign management. I’ve worked with politicians at nearly every level except the presidency, and I can tell you that nearly all of them were regular people who decided to run for office to change something. So from my perspective, if there’s something wrong with the system, I’m not convinced it’s the system’s fault. It’s the people’s fault.

On term limits, I should clarify that I do see education as an important role of lobbysits. 24-year-old legislative assistants wouldn’t be able to do their job without them. It’s just that I’d like my elected officials to have the institutional knowledge to be able to sort through all the info and make good decisions, and then be able to vote them out if they don’t, so generally I am opposed to term limits. My concern with lobbysists is that all of them, even the good guys, have a specific agenda. That agenda may be absolutely benign, but a legislator still needs to be able to balance those benign interests against all the other benign interests he or she has to decide on.

On the at-large congressional districting, it’s just an idea I’ve been knocking around recently in thinking about the politicization of drawing congressional boundaries. Why do we even have those boundaries in the first place? There’s several good reasons I’m sure. But could we do it differently? I disagree that at-large seats would mean candidates pandering to a statewide majority, because it wouldn’t be a winning strategy. In my rough-draft version, if a state has, say, seven congressional districts, then we’d take the top seven vote-getters from the general election. But you’d only vote for one congressional candidate. Actually, you could do it as a jungle primary (where all candidates run on the same ballot).But anyway, if someone did manage to get a statewide majority, he or she would still be only one of the seven. The other six would split the other 50%-1 among them. The better strategy would be to figure out mathmatically how many votes I need to be in that top seven, then figure out where to get them. I don’t know if that would be worse for minority constituencies, but it could be better. If I know I there’s a good 15% of the electorate that’s left-handed single men, maybe I want to put myself forward as the candidate of the left-handed single men, without having to pander to enough other contituencies to reach 50% 1. So it could open up more opportunities for other parties as well. Or I could be the guy from Vinings, pledging to fight for Vinings in Congress. Same thing as now, only the district lines are fuzzy instead of convoluted.

Anyway, I’m boring even myself now, so I’ll stop. :)

in fact, it’s not humanly possible for a legislator to read every single piece of legislation that s/he is called upon to vote on. No Child Left Behind is nearly 900 pages long. and that’s just ONE bill. lobbyists provide the type of subject-area expertise that legislators just can’t develop. their real power lies in information, not in money. there are pretty strict rules about meals and things that lobbyists can give to members of congress.

if we think that lobbying is a bad idea…perhaps we should put more money into legislative staffing? legislative staffs are overworked, underpaid and tend to have a lot of green, recent graduates on them because they’re the folks willing to accept overworked, underpaid jobs.

perhaps if there was more experience, longevity and expertise in legislative staffs, lobbyists would have less power.

also, technically, nongermane riders are only allowed in the senate, the house rules prohibit them. so, it’s only at-large statewide folks who are allowed to attached riders unrelated to the subject of the bill on the floor. not to say that stuff doesn’t happen in the house before bills get the the floor, but it’s not quite as easy.

i’m not exactly sure why making all house seats at-large within a state would decrease this amount of activity. part of me also thinks this is a bad idea because then, localized minorities would end up with less representation in the house through dilution of their voting power. candidates would have to pander to the statewide majority, by and large.

I guess you would have to define ‘relevant’ in a legal sense. How about this, instead:

If a bill is defeated, another vote is taken. Whether to send the bill back to committee or not. If its voted to be sent back to the committee, some kind of guidence is sent back with it, expressing the changes the entire legislative body wants to see in the bill.

Just some thoughts…

I don’t agree with “no amendments”, but how about only amendments relevant to the main subject of the bill, and furthering its intent rather than countering it?

Agreed on the parties being semi-permanent coalitions. I’d prefer permanently tenuous coalitions, while not to the same degree as Israel. The parties should have to work, each session, to put together a majority coalition. Let the people choose, every two years, who gets to put the coalition together.

When, say, only 15% of America doesn’t vote, I’ll buy the laziness number. But not with our currently dismal numbers. Likewise on the swelling number of independents. It’s not about laziness, not at root. It’s about disillusionment. This much opting out of the system is not good for the republic, and calling it laziness makes the problem no better. It’s not really even rule by the people any more when only a third of America gets to pick the President (and sometimes not even then).

I don’t think folks think the two parties are the same. Or at least, they haven’t since Nader used that line in 2000. I think it’s more that people think the parties don’t stand for anything but the parties themselves. And I agree. The best argument either party can make at this point is, “What, you’re not gonna vote for the other guy, are you?” Both parties should be visibly shaken with shame for that.

I like your house district idea. And it could be implemented on a state by state basis.

Re: lobbyists. A multi-party system would likely diminish the power of lobbyists. In a multi-party system, most of the major interest groups would align themselves with one of the three to five major parties. In fact, each party could then be seen as a coalition of interest groups. Each party would have its own, far narrower contituency, contituencies which would have very clear expecations of what they wanted out of legislation. Legislators from the Green Party, for example, would have little incentive to even meet with a Big Oil lobbyist, while that certainly wouldn’t be the case with a Democrat today. In turn, the forming of a majority coalition every two years in the House would moderate the influence of the party with a plurality. Americans would know, much better than they do now, what they are actually voting for. And which interest group is in what coalition would be that much clearer too.

Here’s a few wet-blanket thoughts for you as well. :)

People who don’t vote have no excuse for it other than laziness. They don’t think their vote counts? Look at 2000. They don’t think there’s any difference in the two parties? Look at what Bush has done to this country. If you’re not interested enough in civic life to be moved by these things and get your ass out to vote, a party of reasonable moderates is not going to do it for you. You know what will motivate people to vote? A candidate who says he/she will bring the troops out of Iraq and station them along the border with Mexico. Someone who polarizes people. A divider, not a uniter.

Term limits for legislative offices put more power in the hands of lobbyists. People think all lobbysits do is hand out money. Their primary job is to educate, or under Republican rule, to write the damn bills themselves. I’d rather have the one with the knowledge and power be the guy who has to stand for election every two years.

The common wisdom in political circles is that everyone has the environment on their list of issues, somewhere around number four or five, but nobody VOTES based on the environment unless its a toxic waste dump in their backyard. Jobs, taxes, education, etc, trump environment every time, except for single-issue voters, who are marginalized by the fact that they don’t give money and they don’t vote for people who get elected, so no one is answerable to them.

My solution for redistricting: have the normal number of congressional seats allotted to each state, but have them all be at-large. Then you take the top X# of vote-getters in the election and fill the seats that way. People could still run in a “district” by concentrating their campaigns on a specific geographical area, making promises to protect whatever industries or boondoggles the folks there are in to. That would be cheaper and more efficient than trying to run statewide or compete in only the biggest urban areas. But it would also mean that a member of congress wouldn’t be locked into supporting something stupid like a useless military base just because it is the major employer in a their defined district. And of course it means no redistricting and less of a lock on office by incumbents.

another important reform, IMO — give DC some freaking representation in the federal legislature. jesus. i know most people don’t live in DC, and, therefore, don’t care, but it is so fucked up that an elected body that the citizens of DC have absolutely no representation in (a body which, therefore, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about DC) is charged with managing the city.

i have to agree that term limits for senators and representatives are not a great idea…i think that limits on service in leadership positions and a revision of the way that seniority rules work in the committee system in congress would be more effective than getting rid of the kind of institutional memory that comes from multi-term legislators.

being an elected official is generally a pretty hard job, and as a country we won’t benefit from having an entire congress filled with folks who are learning the ropes every election cycle.

the way the seniority system works in the committee structure is a major problem, though. and a major reason that even corrupt folks like DeLay get reelected and reelected — districts and states lose a lot of power in the legislative process now when they lose or oust a long-time incumbent.

we would see a lot of positive change if the assignment of legislators to committee memberships and chairships and the calendar setting process were more equitable.