Congressman, senators, and house representatives are supposed to have the best interest at heart of the state or country(US) thast voted for them. The reality is, they do what's best for themselves. INstead of uniting to help America , the political parties of the Legislative branch have done nothing but hurt America. They dont pass any laws that wont benifit their own parties exclusively and take weeks to solve daily problems. And who the hell decided to let Congree vote on their own freakin salaries?! Now to my point...since only the rich and powerful get to have a say since the senators dont speak for the people but for themselves, why not just eliminate the middleman all together? The American public knows what they want, what laws, and what changes. If Congress is completely done away with, people could submit bills and ideas. OBviously, they would have to be for example, sent to their own state legislature or county for approval to keep ludicrous ideas from being submitted. Any good bills could be voted on by the people directly and then sent to the President to be passed. This way the Judicial, Executive and the PEOPLE would be the three branches of government. This would lead to a "true democracy" as mentioned in my respnse to electoral colleges. I could go on for hours in explicit detail, but I want some input. What do you think?

Running a 300 million-plus person true democracy would be nigh on impossible. Instead, why not push for stronger emphasis on the powers of the states rather than the feds. State legislatures are generally more receptive to the needs of their constituents. I also support change in the US Congress through NOT voting. If voter turnout gets down to around a million people nationwide, then that's a more powerful message than the 50-50 split we have when both bases are 'mobilized' by their respective parties, who don't actually represent the bases they're trying to motivate. Maybe an embarassingly low turnout will send the message that they don't represent our interests.

It is not possible to run a true democracy in a country the size of the United States, simply for the physical and logistical problems it would present (how do you get every single person in the country to vote on every single issue?). I don't disagree that Congress is awfully silly nowadays, but converting to a direct democracy is not a viable alternative.

What was previously said is correct - the only way to get close to that is to have stronger state governments. It's much easier for an individual state to govern itself than to try and run a country the size of the US with direct representation.

I agree with what you both have said. IT is seemingly unlikely to ever change the country to a true democracy. Still, state legislatures would be like another senator or a house representative. They are both supposed to be directed by the state, but will still serve themselves. I guess wherever there is politics ther will always be corruption though. Also, I don't think a voting boycott would be the answer. Voter turnouts are low anyway and Congress probrably wouldnt even get the message. Still, something has to be done about the uselessness of Congress if we are to advance as a country.

In my opinion, a better response would be to simply vote for whoever is NOT the incumbent (unless the challenger is egregiously horrible). A consistent pattern of "throw the bums out" across many districts will at least cause SOME change.

If voter turnout reaches catastrophically tiny levels, I predict that none of us will like the results.

Agreed.

With our technology, 300 million people voting is definately possible. You just need to do it intelligently. Here is my solution instead of congress:

Popular vote on every bill proposed and ANYONE can submit a bill. How?

Everyone can submit a bill proposal (following STRICT guidelines as to how it must be submitted) to the town council. The town council will then decide whether the bill is suitable to continue to the next level

The state legislature will then look at bills each town council has sent to the state (only one per town per voting cycle which would be every 3 mo.) and decide which of them can go to the next level.

The regional legislature (would have to be implemented) would look at the bills each state in that region have proposed, one per state per cycle. The region would put up ONE of those bills to continue on.

Finally, the federal government would put the one bill from each region up to a popular vote. Simple majority rules.

The chain of going from town, state, region and then federal government would help root out dumb bills and stupid, non-senseical bills, along with the fact that only people SERIOUS about submitting a real bill would type it up according to procedure. I think this would get the country back into politics. Obviously I'm no political genius, so it would require some tweaking, but i think it is a good start!

If you can get the Constitution amended to do that (which would take some radical politicking), more power to you. Though "one bill per cycle" probably wouldn't cut it.

That's the main concern I have with such a system - what if there are several important things that need to happen? And if you say to just add it on as an amendment or appendix, then what's the point of limiting it to just one bill per cycle?

One topic PER REGION. And, if you increase the number of cycles it could avoid that.

How can you define a "topic"?