Revamping the House of Representatives.

[Ravy]

This has been alluded to in a number of other posts, so I thought it deserved a current thread of its own.

Why not have one representative for every 25,000 or so residents of a state. This would greatly increase the number of representatives (currently by a factor of 25 or so).

Since there would be no way to really house the representatives in one room of the capitol, the representatives could communicate and vote electronically. It would greatly limit the influence of special interests, since they would a) have a lot more people that they need to influence, and b) those people would be geographically dispersed.

The bulk of the proceedings of the House would be televised and broadcast on the Internet. For the most part, except for private communications, you could see what your representatives see. Representatives could stay at home (in their districts) and more accurately reflect the will of their constituents, since they would live among them.

We could lower the salaries of the representatives since they would not have to get a second residence around DC nor travel all that much. Elections would be a lot cheaper since mass marketing is not as overpowering in small races. We would save by not providing office space in DC.

Votes could be cast in an enlarged time frame to allow for such things as local power outages, etc.

What say you?

[Skidmore]

1. I basically agree with you.

However, I do believe it is important to meet with each other daily face-to-face, in a room. The quality of working relationships is much different than when you interact over electronic media only. They need to be in one place to do their jobs. I think the greatest problem with this last congress is that those people spent so little time actually working with each other beyond their individual caucuses on anything. They need to be together--alot.

[Ravy]

2. You have a point, but there is also the opposite approach...

that there is *too much* collusion and collaboration between the representatives, which leads to the corruption and group-think.

[Bucky]

5. Of course removing them from proximity to each other would prevent collabortion AND cooperation

A voting scheme with 12,000 members in the House of Representatives will also limit the "great speeches" of the day to US Senate where small states (mostly western mountain states) hold an institutional advantage. The whole plan has an appeal, but it seems like its problems would outweigh its charm. And besides, don't opinion polls already have the effect of registering the voice of the people in national affairs?

[Ravy]

6. Are representatives supposed to vote the will of the people

as a whole, or the will of their constituents? I think this is an important question and worthy of much philosophical discussion and debate.

And people could still make great speeches, and write good articles to influence the debate. Look at what a good YouTube video will do.

[Bucky]

8. Both and neither. The excess of everyone looking out for just their region nearly killed the US

Back in the 1780s there was chaos aplenty in the relatively homogenous United States because everyone in the Articles of Confederation government decentralized power, and therefor decentralized what people percieved as being "in their own interest." The whole point of the Federalist faction that nearly seized control of the Constitutional convention (until moderates under Roger Sherman reined in the radical nationalists like Madison and Washington) was that the country would not be safe and powerful if you always deferred to the local interest. That means, sometimes, you have do the right thing and vote against your local interest and even pay the price at the ballot box two years later.

Under a decentralized scheme like the OP lays out, local interests would seem nearly unstoppable. There is an inherent national value gained by physically removing voting representatives from their constituents and subjecting them to the persuasions of national interests strong enough to muster lobbying efforts. The voters still hold the power, but you do need to have a strong re-centralizing interest as well.

A better example of what's wrong with decentralizing power is to look at the country that used to be called "Gran Colombia" and now is called Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, and Peru. Actually the whole Panama thing is Teddy Roosevelt's fault, but the rest of them seceded from their union because there was no constitutional structure in place that allowed local powers to be curbed for the sake of the centralized interest.

A radical shift in power bases can have a devastating effect on a large nation's cohesion.

[Ravy]

3. And another point...

If their job is to represent their districts, then being face-to-face with people of their district is more important than being face-to-face with someone representing another constituency.

If they want to rent the Orange Bowl once or twice a year to all get together then that would suit me.

[Bucky]

4. Alexander Hamilton: "A thousand Socrateses would still be a mob"

"Since there would be no way to really house the representatives in one room of the capitol, the representatives could communicate and vote electronically."

Hmmm, now who do you suppose would get the contract to provide those electronic voting machines?

[Ravy]

7. *grin* - well, it is a public vote, so I don't think that is an issue. nt