Americans Do Not Trust Their Congress

Ninety-three percent of those recently surveyed said that they do not trust the U.S. Congress.  Actually, it is a poorly designed instrument of government. To say that it represents the people is simply not true. Even as a poorly designed instrument of government, individual members of Congress should have held themselves to a higher standard of personal integrity. 

The Founders were openly doubtful that their brief little Constitution could work among non-Christians.  If today’s Congress were to pass a law against spitting on the sidewalk, it would necessarily have a hundred times more words than the entire Constitution. We live in a paradox having ten times the lawyers of any other society, yet in a nation of Christians claiming to have other means of settling disputes.

Now, to the higher ethical standards our lawmakers should have been observing. Number one is their unfaithfulness to a community size Congressional District of about 40,000 persons, to which they were originally assigned. In a district that size, people can “shop” among candidates just as they “shop” for all their other necessities of life. At each 10-year census, the crooked lawmakers have expanded their districts (and their power) until each district now has 700,000 persons.

These crooked reps have designed their own districts, each gobbling up sixteen other districts that should have their own reps. They horse trade and re-arrange constituencies among themselves, disregarding their duty to a particular constituency. The district may end up looking like a snake or horse shoe. The result of these shenanigans is that most local communities in these humungous districts are represented by foreigners.

The second problem with Congress is that it was never set up as the single law making body of a united people. The Constitution is brief.  It didn’t come with a 300-page manual about how the people shall run their new federation. If those who set up the system in 1789 could have had access to such a manual, it would have told them to first get their own houses in order. Adapt their own governments to the same district that was to rule the federation. Equalize all of their districts in all of their States to conform with the Congressional District idea.

Try to imagine what a smooth-running synchronized system we would have, if all the people were organized into one set of Home Districts (Congressional Districts). One rep from each district should be doing all the governing of the entire federation of fifty-one governments. The fifty Governors and the President would coordinate their calling up of the reps for duty at their respective capitols.

The much maligned Electoral College (fifty-one of them) should employ these Home District Reps as the “electors” who choose all the executive officers of the fifty-one governments. The Founders profoundly feared partisanship such as has deadlocked Congress, and is spreading hate and fear among us.  

We grassroots voters were never expected to run the governments of the federation. The Founders assigned that job to the Congressmen. These “congress people” have never been fully conceptualized.  To run a nation of over 300,000,000 persons, divided into districts of 40,000, requires 8,000 reps.

Would you rather blunder into another civil war, or reorganize the representative system into Home Districts? This November, as you choose your state rep for the next two years, you should be demanding that your rep comply with his superior Constitution which wants his/her people put into one set of home districts. Such a change will put the reps of the fifty states into the U.S. Congress, thereby eliminating the U.S. Congress that satisfies seven percent of the people.

The U.S. Senate is a disgrace since Amendment XVII was passed in 1913. It is easy to conclude that the senators themselves engineered that passage. When the amendment is rescinded, and home districting is accomplished, the people of the local districts will finally be in charge for the first time in the nation’s history.

One  more detail is apropos: Once the home district idea is established, each local county government, or its counterpart, should be put in complete charge of a district’s administration. The district and its boundaries should not be administered by a rep or any combination of reps.  

The More Perfect Union of Home Districts, Term Limits, and Nonpartisanship

This union of states was clobbered together.  Even In this 21^st Century, it is still just clobbered together. The union that was expedient in 1789 has drifted along with little self-analysis. Its scant three million people have become over three hundred million people.  We are a nation whose collective conscience is full of contradictions.  Although all voices should be equal, religious organizations cower in fear at all the intimidations thrown at them by political organizations.

All voters are cruelly placed in multiple state and federal districts, all of which are far too large.  Such a complicated system drives the voter into partisanship and despair.  We have always governed ourselves quite well within our local communities. But our attempts to organize local communities into a nation state deserve a grade of D-.  

A local community can easily elect one of its reputable leaders to represent it in the legislative halls of a nation state.  But no, states cannot understand what their U.S. Constitution means by ordering one set of equalized districts. That one set of reps can handle the entire representative system of the people.

What are political parties, really, but self-organized gangs which have embedded themselves into our system.  They are the natural enemies of Electoral Colleges. Political parties will lose their influence just as soon as every local community has its own rep, and that rep collegiately nominates and elects all the officers associated with the federation of states.  It works like this:

A local community of 40,000 people chooses one of its leaders to represent it for a two year term.  Constitutionally, that rep is the community’s only contact with the federal system. That rep joins with fellow reps to nominate and elect all elective state officials.  That rep joins with fellow reps to nominate and elect all elective federal officials. That rep joins with fellow reps to run the state’s legislative assembly.  That rep joins with fellow reps to run the house of congress. After two years, the local community evaluates that rep at the polls. A county government chooses its state senator, and thereby creates a state senate. A state government chooses its federal senator, and thereby creates a federal senate. The local community chooses a rep, and thereby creates two electoral colleges plus two houses of representatives.  The people sit back and relax, confident that they can make adjustments every two years. It is their civil right to do this but their states will not allow it. The Founders created a civil right to a home district.

Instead, states force every household of every local community to have five reps, two of which are statewide. The other three are from humungous districts, all having different ranks and pecking orders. The local congressional district, for example, has 700,000 people, up from its original 40,000 people.

If States continue refusing to equalize and standardize their people into one set of home districts, some force is going to set up its own system.  That force will be beyond any orderly control.  State governments and their people have everything to gain, and nothing to lose by acting before such a force takes over.    

This orderly change makes the term limit problems go away. Dependency on Democrats and Republicans goes away. Big money and big press also lose their influence. The home district is the congressional district but with a different name.  If everybody were assigned to a home district of 40,000 (the original size of the Founders’ district), their eight thousand reps would rule everything above the county government level. 

This collection of personal consciences would become the nation’s conscience. The poll takers would be constantly probing that conscience.  Together, they would become a mutual education society, enabling both the reps and their poll takers to act more intelligently.  The nation’s pulse would be on constant display.

The federal constitution is superior to state constitutions.  Where a state’s constitution conflicts with it, the federal one should prevail. The goal of having a more perfect union calls for one uniform set of districts, not fifty one odd ball sets of districts into which our states have put us.   We-the-people are psychologically tortured over voting decisions we should not have to make. All because the States do not know how to set up and run the federation of their dreams.

Direct democracy by the people manages local communities very well.  The federal system should be using representative democracy. The voters step aside and allow their reps to run the system.  But States have never agreed on the common grid of local districts that can run the entire federation. Where there is no vision, the people suffer. Our federation has remained inert. The fifty states are strangely allied with their nation state, all being too stupid to federate.

When States structured their double system of representation in 1789, they created a districting mess. We are not two bodies politic.  We are one body politic being forced by our states to act as if we were two bodies politic.  It would be so simple to set up a grid of equal local districts and allocate them among the states. The reps produced by that one grid are the sum total of all the reps needed to run the federal system from the county level up the pyramid. 

Gigantic egos, putting themselves first, stand in the way of doing it. Only submissive egos allow gigantic egos to stand in the way.

Let’s get our ducks all in a row and synchronize this system into the federation it should be.  Even with home districting the reps should not set or adjust boundaries. That job belongs to the counties in which the districts are located.  Counties know their fractional share of the total population and can work with adjoining counties in setting up and managing these home districts.

Let’s get our double lawmaking out of its constant stream of jurisdictional disputes in the courts.  The delegates who signed the Constitution went back home unaware that they had agreed to home districting.  They were all thinking inside their own little boxes.  That has not changed.  

Ask any State Rep about this.  The answer you will get goes something like this: ”I took an oath to abide by my constitution which has its own districting system.” These state reps see no need to abide by a superior constitution.  They are caught up in the same schizophrenia that forces one body politic to act as if it were two.

It's time to love the Electoral College!

The Electoral College is the alternative to partisanship.  Democrats and Republicans particularly are disdainful of it because it constantly reminds the people that there is an alternative to partisanship. However, Democrats and Republicans have so abused it in election law that its real purpose has been forgotten. 

The Electoral College was to have been not only the nominating convention for the federation’s executive officers, but also the final choosers of the federation’s executive officers.  These executive officers of the federation include all the Constitutional Officers of the fifty states, plus the President and Vice-President.

If the nation were “home districted” as implied by the Founders in their “Congressional District Idea,” everybody would have one home district headed up by one elector/legislator.  That elector/legislator would, immediately upon election, take over the operations of the Federation of States.  That district would be about the size of the original one (40,000), which adds up to a total of 8,000 districts for the nation. Each district rep would enjoy a common pecking order with the other 7,999.  We would become a nation of equals.

The Constitution says that a district should not be less than 30,000, but it makes clear that the federation’s governing belongs to its rep and not to its people. A look at the way the Founders set up the elections system should be convincing:  They set up three levels of voting competence. (1) The people were to elect their reps for two-year terms.  (2) The Reps were to elect their executive officers for four-year terms.  (3) And the reps, when organized as assemblies, were to elect their own “watchdogs” (the senators) for six-year terms.   

At that point, the Founders delivered their constitution to the State Governments for “implementation.”  Did the States equalize the districting of their new “more perfect union” to give their citizens a common legislative body that could operate the entire federation? Has anybody ever thought about doing it in the last two and a quarter centuries? Sensibly sized “home districting” and use of Electoral Colleges would go a long way to healing our sick, partisan un-federated “union”.

Create Home Districting for the Federation

The partisan quagmire that is about to crash the system stems from a failure of the States to properly organize their people.  What the people most need is a sensibly sized “home district” and their one rep who takes over all governing duties in their behalf.  This nation has never known the tranquility that such as system could bring to it.

Only the State Governments are able to reorganize their people into sensibly sized home districts.  Inexplicably, States have never seen fit to do so.  Their myopic legislatures feel bound by their State Constitutions, while at the same time they fail to see that they are contradicting their Federal Constitution’s call for Congressional Districts.  The two constitutions should be reconciled in favor of the more dominant Federal Constitution.

The Federal System requires a common set of districting.  Otherwise, it simply will not work.  It is not working now and never has worked.  What is working now are two clashing systems of States vs. the Federal Government.  The people are caught in the middle and are being driven insane as they try to satisfy the voting demands made upon them by the two clashing systems.

Whenever the State Legislatures see fit to abandon their districting system in favor of a “commonly agreed upon size of Congressional District” to also run their State Governments, the people can have their sanity back.  One set of “home districts” of 40,000 each creates 8,000 reps.  With those 8,000 reps, let’s return to the original plans laid out in the Constitution.  Let them elect the executives of the federal system, Governors, President, et al.  And, tranquilly, make all of our laws.

The People’s Ruling Class

The Founders expected that their more perfect union would be ruled from a set of equalized local districts set up by State Governments.  State Governments seem not to have the foresight to abandon their archaic districting systems in favor of the same system by which the national government is ruled.  One set of representatives should be ruling the entire federation from bottom to top.

The ruling class by which we are now being ruled is a mysterious lot of mostly self-appointed persons in powerful positions, some of which can be identified and some not.  In order for the people to participate in this ad hoc mysterious system, each must register as a member of one of its political parties.  This is precisely the system that the Founders saw as divisive and to be avoided if at all possible.

Thirteen state governments which set up the system are the culpable ones.  Now fifty state governments share that culpability and should be getting us out of the messed-up system.  It would be embarrassingly easy to do, once they visualize what needs to be done.  It would create an entirely new ruling class operated from every local district in the nation.  Each of those districts would create its own political flavor, and that flavor would undergo possible modification at each 2-year rep election cycle.

States need to drop every aspect of their old districting that runs their state governments.  They need to reach a common agreement on what the population of a proper local district should be.  (Why not, until studies show otherwise, adopt the 40,000 of the original Congressional District?)  In a nation of 320,000,000 persons, that would create a grid of exactly 8,000 “elite rulers” who would form the foundation of all governing---from the smallest chartered entities of each state to the top governing officials anywhere in the nation.  Those districts would thumb their noses at partisan ideologies as they choose their favorite local leader. That leader may be a dyed-in-the-wool partisan, but will “dance with the ones who brought him.”

Phase two focuses on the vanities of we-the-people, ourselves.  After we have elected that elite body of representatives, we need to step out of their way and let them do the governing, for good or ill.  It is their responsibility and we will deal with them at the next election.  The Founders created a 3-tier electorate: those qualified to elect persons to 2-year terms, those qualified to elect the 4-year term executives, and those qualified to elect the 6-year term senators.  The longer the term, the more sophisticated the voter. We have thoughtlessly trashed that system, both as it applies to electoral colleges and as it applies to election of senators.  Both are fundamentally sound ideas that have become propagandized beyond belief.

No matter what the system of government in any nation, the elite class of people always manages to find its way to the top of it.  We have been given the opportunity to elect our elite class in an orderly manner. Our system is in peril because its grassroots has been manipulated by skilled, deceptive partisan charlatans.  The charlatans are soon weeded out in their small districts.  The truly elites are not charlatans.  If we do not elect them, they will be imposed upon us by other tactics.

Why not resurrect the Founders’ idea which would create 8,000 reps? We have never tried it.  It would synchronize all governing into one interconnected system. The propaganda driven national frenzy the partisans put on every four years is a disgrace that a proper ruling class renders obsolete.