Carmine Stoffo Jr.

? ? ?

There is plenty broken. I'll address one thing only:
the government is too big, but the elected part of it is too small.

In a small town you run into the mayor and other elected officials as you go about your business. You have lots of opportunity to tell them what you are thinking. They are actively immersed in local community activities themselves so they have a perceptual understanding of the issues.

But in Washington DC, there are 537(?) of them to over 300 million of us. There is no real chance that any of us will have a detailed discussion with our congress(wo)man or senator on any issue at any time in our lives. They are most exposed to big business interests and most inclined to giving them what they want. It is part of the symbiosis of power.

Make the congress larger, making each representative and each senator smaller, making each of them closer to each of us.

Say if there were one representative for every 5,000 citizens, that would make about 60,000 of them. On the surface that sounds unmanageable. But they could spend more time in their home towns to pay more attention to us. They could meet in smaller regional groups to address regional issues. Occasionally the whole bunch of them could get together, maybe in a sports stadium to address larger issues.

Of course they would not be able to make so many laws. This would be good for us. Because the less they control centrally, the more local control we have. That is to say: the more individual freedom and responsibility we each have.

On another point, I agree with the poster who suggests abolishing the electoral college and making every election based upon popular vote.