Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Expensive, difficult, slightly dangerous, not particularly effective... I'm on a roll.

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Surveys associated with legislator's district

Mandatory random surveys associated with legislator
  (-2)
(-2)
  [vote for,
against]

Another web-based idea would be each legislator has a top-20 legislative issue survey of results in his or her district. Each voter is registered using the voter's list and gets a unique web ID; falsely impersonating another voter or voters would be criminally punishable. So the voters register their positions as in a survey; and not one of those dumbass surveys the politicians send you to see who is dumb enough to provide an address to get on the contribution list. The survey is constantly updated and the results are on the legislator's website for all to see. If the legislator votes contrary to the majority, the idea is that he'd better be able to justify it. The self-select scheme could be rigged either by activists who organize to slant the results or by criminal fraud. Since I'm not sure enough people will self-select themselves to do this voluntarily without a bad motive, I propose that random registered IDs be selected to be surveyed by the equivalent of a jury commission. And like jury duty, it'd have minor penalties, like your next set of license plates would cost extra, if you didn't do it. Non-voters would just have to register to vote if they wanted to potentially be surveyed. If they won't even do that, I'm not really interested in their opinion. The survey commission would have some guarantee of independence and the drafting of the survey issues and the size of the sample. I don't think I'd trust anyone to try and define and include all definable demographic segments in order to achieve a "balance". That would be subject to endless debate and manipulation for advantage.
daddyvortex, Mar 13 2010

[link]






       option ii) vote for somebody who represents you.
FlyingToaster, Mar 13 2010
  

       Thanks. No one has ever seen a legislator who represents someone, nor I one who represents me. Too many people . . . . So we have to formulate institutions that deal with the masses.   

       You're toast!
daddyvortex, Mar 14 2010
  

       To insert a paragraph break, leave an empty line (just hit "return" twice). It'll make your text easier to read.   

       What's the advantage of having the extra step of indirection of politicians and surveys, rather than a "direct democracy" where everybody votes on everything? It seems you're inheriting all the problems of the latter, while still having a complicated mechanism in the middle.
jutta, Mar 15 2010
  
      
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