Leave the Senate the way it is, but make the House of Representatives truly representative by getting rid of democracy in elections. We're not really a democracy anyway, remember? "I pledge allegiance to the REPUBLIC of the United States of America." I assume you know the difference, right? Allow me to quote...
"Suppose the majority wants to take away your home, business, or your children. Obviously, there's a problem! The flaw in democracy is that if you allow majority rule, then everybody's rights are up-for-grabs. All you have to do is get more than 1/2 of the people to want something, on any given day, and you no longer have any rights. It's sometimes called 'the tyranny of a majority.'
"The fundamental difference between a democracy and a republic is that if someone or a group of people came up to you and said that they were going to take away your home or business or children, you'd probably stand up and say, 'No, you can't do that! I have my rights protected by the Constitution of the United States of America.' And if you said that, you'd be describing a republic."
- Civics in Seconds -
There! See? The constitution supercedes democracy in order to protect us from mob mentality. Which means elections don't have to be Democratic/winner take all. They can work a whole other way.
Right now, if the candidate you vote for doesn't win the election, you end up without representation. How about a system with no winners or losers. Whoever you vote for becomes your representative. Period. Everybody gets representation. Representatives who represent the most people wield the most power.
Comments (6)
I've been thinking about this constitutional issue "a lot" lately. I keep seeing "movements", "Petitions", to amend this or add that. Before we started doing that we had a pretty smooth running Republic. I pretty sure if we undid everything that has been done that is unconstitutional we would be at a place where we could say, "OK, this is manageable".
What I would really like to see are instant runoff elections, as are held in some areas (possibly in the U.S.? maine comes to mind for local elections, but I could be wrong).
Instant runoffs mean that when voting, you don't make just one choice, you rank the candidates for office in order of preference, so that no candidate gets a majority, the votes from candidate with the lowest number of votes goes to the second-choice candidates of those voters, and so on until there is a clear majority winner.
With current technology, and paper balloting to ensure accuracy of counting, this should be able to be done, and relatively quickly (although we waited a long time for the Bush-Gore "election results", and I thought we should have waited longer—accuracy is more important than instant, IMHO).
Instant runoff elections are perfect in elections for which there is a winner and loser. What I'm suggesting is a way for everybody to choose who represents them from a field of candidates. It's not, strictly speaking, an "election," but simply a personal selection process. The only winner is YOU. Whoever you choose to represent you, DOES represent you.
I personally believe that our founding fathers were correct when they stated that majority rule is the basis of a republic. That when we take that away than we cease to be a republic. The only reason that a minority has any rights is because a majority has extended those rights to them and continue to protect those rights.
I like the idea of selecting a personal representative to represent my opinion as proxy. To work well, I think this would need to be hierarchical however. If each person can have their own candidate, we might end up with a lot of people in the legislature.
How do you handle the votes of people whose entry was impossible to read?
I propose that the House of Representatives be disbanded and replaced with an online representative system where each and every citizen has a vote via the web by the proper use of the Real ID card to identify and verify each vote of every citizen. Each citizen can vote, or give and remove their proxy vote to any regional virtual representative that expresses that citizen’s ideals and desires. Anyone who wishes to serve as a Representative to the Virtual House can form an icon/picture that represents them, state their ideals and platform in their description, and publicly account for their voting record in a permanent platform. Bull sessions where each Representative has time to speak to the greater audience concerning current legislation. Those Representatives with the most regional proxy votes will be allowed higher in line to speaking rights to address legislation and introductions. Those Representatives, who attain a certain level of regional percentage of proxy votes, will be paid as a Representative of the Federal Congress. Only those Representatives who have the required level of proxy votes can view, vote and introduce legislation that may be deemed sensitive. This system of representation is a more dynamic and changing system of governance. This system would be a true system of democracy, something our founding fathers never could have envisioned.