What if the House and Senate consisted of ordinary citizens, like a jury?

[tinfoilinfor2005]

Picked randomly to serve for one year. I have to wonder if much more wouldn't actually get done in Congress?

[shraby]

1. Orrrrr, have a jury of 12 citizens who are rotated

to a new jury monthly sit on the ethics committee.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

2. Sounds suspiciously like oversight to me.

I like it.

[shraby]

3. Oversight by the proper people...drawn from a hat

just like regular juries, with extras in case some get sick.

[dweller]

4. fine with me, just one caveat

make them work for minimum wage.

then sit back and watch how fast it gets changed to a national living wage.

dp

[FloridaPat]

5. There was a story a couple years about about the 13th amendment

to the Consitution. Seems they found some original copies of the US Constitution in France and were suprised to see a 13th amendment. It was drawn up and voted on right before the civil war. It says lawyers can't run for office. Research suggests it was passed, but because of the war, that information got lost. So we can through out all the bums if we could verify that amendment.

Also in the Constitution it says the pres and vice-pres can't be from the same state. So * and cheney broke the law from the get-go.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

7. It was lost because of the civil war?

Methinks it was lost because the lawyers made it disappear! :)

[FloridaPat]

10. Easy to do in times of war.

[wwcsmd]

6. I've been saying this for years too!

Ok, mostly jokingly... I call it Randomolitics! As in, "Could we really do any worse if we just picked names out of a hat?" (The first year I was eligible to vote, for a presidential election, I took it very seriously, attempted to research the frontrunners, and concluded... "Out of x billion people, THESE are the best we can come up with?")

That, along with my notion that (most) people who seek presidency, for example, should automatically be disqualified because, well, they're the kind of people people who'd seek presidency. :) (Actually, it's particularly people who have the facilities to make themselves viable candidates because of what getting those facilities can entail.)

Also, I think all political positions should pay that of the average teacher's salary. And, maybe they could live in dorms, and have to eat all their meals in the dorm cafeteria while in session...

I know I know, a lot of the "benefits" are actually unofficial pork/lobby ones. I just wish there was SOME way to take away the potential of personal gain, then maybe you could get more people in there who were there because they were actually committed to the work/ideals (like teachers, um, nuns, etc.)

[Xithras]

8. That's what the House of Representatives was supposed to be.

Representatives of the ordinary people. The Senate and Presidency were to be populated by politicians skilled in running the country, while the House of Representatives was supposed to balance them by giving a voice to the common man.

It's interesting, but if you read the papers written by the founders of this country, you'll realize that our government works NOTHING like it was originally envisioned to.

The President is supposed to be the focus of Federal power. In him is supposed to be vested the will of the Federal government.

The Senate is supposed to represent the will of the states (which is why Senators were originally selected by state legislators, not voters). The Senators from California, for example, were supposed to be in Washington to ensure that the Federal government didn't do anything that would harm California, or to influence it to take actions that would benefit their state.

The House of Representatives was supposed to be the voice of the common man. It was drafted as a way to give the common citizen a way to inject his will and override both the will of his local state government AND the will of the federal government if needed. If a law needed passing that the states and feds weren't interested in, the House of Representatives was supposed to give them a forum to argue those bills.

The reality, of course, is that our government works nothing like this. All three branches of government are occupied by politicians, and all three represent the will of the Federal government. The Constitution was a brilliantly drafted document and their proposed governmental system would have worked well, but the drafters forgot to factor in the influence of both political parties AND career politicians. A couple hundred years ago they didn't fully appreciate the sway of influence peddlers, activists didn't exist, and neither did lobbyists. The Constitution laid out a wonderful plan to create an open society, but it failed to put safeguards in place to prevent people from corrupting it. What we have today is nothing like what they envisioned.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

9. mmm, no wonder it is self destructing...

Thanks for the information; some interesting points to ponder here.

[FloridaPat]

11. The "common man" in 1776 was the male landed gentry.

Which even that would be quite a few Americans. Add females and that would be most people.

[Xithras]

14. In 1776, most Americans were landowners.

It's true that women, slaves, and natives weren't allowed to vote, but most citizens were, in fact, landowners. Land was incredibly cheap back then, since anyone who wanted some could just clearcut a bit of forest and claim it as their own. That unlimited supply kept the value of land low, allowing even relatively poor people to own small bits of land. Since the original requirement was a landowning male, most households did actually have the right to vote.

[Bill McBlueState]

12. I don't like that vision of the Senate

I'm happy for the amendment that provided for the direct election of Senators (anyone? anyone?). Since "states" aren't thinking individuals, they can't have interests that need to be represented. Only people have interests.

Now, we need to keep the ball rolling and amend other aspects of the constitution that treat states as thinking entities in need of representation. The Electoral College, for example.

[Xithras]

17. I don't know that I agree with that.

States do have "interests". The economic, aid, and trade needs of a state like Alabama are quite different than the needs of a state like California. The purpose of the Senate was to allow the state legislatures to have a voice in the crafting of federal legislation, which in theory isn't a bad thing. It was the point where the state and federal governments merged together, and was supposed to be the facilitator of cooperation between the two.

The 17th Amendment wasn't actually passed to make the government more democratic, but to make it less corrupt. While the original theory of the Senate may have had some valid reasoning, in practice it became a corrupt institution. State legislators would use a Senatorship as a reward for past party leaders, for big political contributors, or even as a way to get rid of opposition politicians that they didn't like. Governors would "retire" from office into a senatorship, and fatcat businessmen would get appointed in exchange for bribes and contributions. Finally, people realized that the only way to eliminate the corruption was to make the Senate accountable to the people. Hence, the 17th Amendment.

They're all vestiges of the old states rights setup. Originally, of course, I would have been a Citizen of California, in the United States of America. That whole concept started getting eroded pretty much from day one, and the civil war largely destroyed the states rights in favor of a single union. The 17th amendment stripped the state governments of one of their last remnants of federal power.

In a way, it's a shame. The more local a government is, the more effective it is at responding to the needs of its citizens. Sadly, the argument over states rights in this nation has always been tied to states independence, which is really a seperate issue.

[Bill McBlueState]

18. about states interests

The people in Alabama do, in general, have different needs from the people in California. But it's anti-democratic for Alabama's needs to count just as much as California's needs when California has ten times as many people.

I don't think the Founders were wrong to write the Constitution the way they did. What they didn't foresee, though, was a day when:

*The most populous state has seventy times as many people as the least populous state.
*Ease of communication and transportation and the requirements of foreign policy lead citizens to think of themselves as Americans first and residents of a particular state second.

Given these, the representation in the Senate isn't good democracy. I haven't personally come up with a better way to do it, though. There has to be a way of preserving the positive aspects of a bicameral legislature while making the bodies as democratic as possible.

[Xithras]

19. But that's where the bicameral aspect comes into play.

If you read the papers on the drafting of the Constitution, you'll find that this one one of the biggest points of argument.

On one hand, you are entirely correct when you say that it's undemocratic to have all the states be equal. To have tiny North Dakota holding an equal number of senate seats as heavily populated California gives the people of North Dakota a greater amount of per capita representation than Californians enjoy.

On the flip side, a democratic and equal Senate would be dominated by the representatives from just a few coastal states. The United States would be run by politicians from Florida, New York, California, and Texas. If the people of these coastal states decided to give the midwest back to the buffalo, there'd be no legal way for the residents of those states to stop them from taking their homes. Why is this important? Because people who don't feel represented are far more likely to resort to insurrection.

So here's the problem. How do you create a truly democratic government AND make sure that your entire country isn't dominated by a few small population centers? How do you balance democratic equality with the rights of people across the country to have their localized interests heard? How do you allow people in relatively unpopulated areas to voice their issues without forcing them to resort to terrorism or rebellion to get peoples attention? As much as we are one nation, and as much as communication and transportation have unified America, we are still a HUGE nation with major regional and cultural differences. True democracy would cut many of these regions and subcultures out of government entirely.

The founders realized this, which is why we have the split we do. The senate is apportioned equally to ensure that everyone has a voice, no matter where they are. The House of Reps is apportioned according to population to balance that and ensure that the will of the majority is also heard. The legislation that results, in theory, is a balance between the needs of the majority of Americans, and the needs of remote areas to have their voices heard.

I don't think there really is any "perfect" solution to this problem.

[KittyWampus]

13. If citizins were picked randomly f/ 1 year, the Congressional Aides

and Lobbyists would be even more powerful. Someone has to understand the system and keep things running in between turnovers... and those somebodies would be very powerful.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

15. My God Would That Be Dangerous. Hell No LOL

[the_spectator]

16. A neat idea. I think some ancient Greek cities did things like this -

ruling bodies chosen by lot. It might help to re-attach Congress to the people (today a Congressman represents more than half a million people, has to be a millionaire, and have Good Hair.)

Also:
it would make for one helluva great Reality show - following these citizens as they make their way around the DC power structure. (Although I think it might help also if, just to conform to the genre's conventions, the Congressmenmen and Congresswomen had to vote one of themselves off the Hill each week.)