Why do we need a congress? Why can't we just vote on the bills ourselves?

Answer 1

I like your idea. That way, everybody could steal $3 each instead of 500 people stealing $4,000,000 each.

Answer 2

That would be a full-time job especially if everyone was required to listen to arguments from both sides before voting. Come to think about it, the idea of representative democracy is not that bad in theory.

What I would like to see is the ability to choose where a portion of my tax bill goes when filing taxes. Similarly to how we can divert $3 towards president's election fund now, I'd like to see a list of major spending categories and a choice to allocate a small portion of my own taxes (maybe 10%) towards what I believe my money should be spent for. This would give some sense of control to the taxpayers and a good feedback mechanism for congress to see whether their programs have any real need and support from the people.

Answer 3

I notice most of the answers are explaining why your second question cannot work. What about your original question?

We need a congress because this is a democratic republic. We elect representatives to operate the government for us. Unfortunately the process has been corrupted by the fact that each person's representation has been diluted to a ridiculous proportion by the growth in population, and the failure to compensate for it by altering the number of congressmen and restructuring the senate.

As a result, special interest groups' representation has grown exponentially at the same time each citizen's actual representation has diminished.

While it is unrealistic to have the whole citizenry vote on everything, it is certainly feasible to increase the number of representatives in the House substantially and not require them to be present to vote.

Elimination of America's version of the house of lords should be considered.

Your question on pure democracy is one of the most pertinent that has been asked lately.

We should be discussing ways to return America's system to be more representative of the people rather than dismissing the idea.

Answer 4

It would cost way too much money and be a logistical nightmare to have the public vote on every spending, taxation, and regulation measure that goes before Congress. Even if the public gets to vote, how do we determine which bills to vote on and which to not vote on. About 95% of all bills in Congress never get voted on because they die in committee. It would be a terribly inefficient and ineffective form of government.

Answer 5

Think for once. There are how many million people in the US? Who would propose a bill to vote on? How long would there be discussion, research etc. by each person on the bill, then how long would we have to vote and by what means. Would people handle the voting free? Would ballots be printed for free? By whom? When you break it down it makes no sense. That is why we have a Democratic Republic where we have a more managable crowd to do all that for us. Communicate with your reps and tell them what you think. They can't represent you if you don't tell them how.

Answer 6

Because having a meeting with 330 million people would be a bit difficult. To run election on a regular basis wouldn't be easy either. We have a representative government, to have one speak for many. If more people where involved in contacting there representatives the government would work much better. A silent majority does nothing to direct how we govern. If all citizens made there opinions known special interest group would lose there power. Peace

Answer 7

Which bill?

By the way, the U.S. is a republic. It uses congressmen.

When the country was formed the founding fathers chose to have congressmen for two main reasons:
1) To keep unintelligent people from voting on matters pertinent to the best interests of the country.
2) To avoid having to collect the votes of millions of people.

The only thing that could be changed is to increase the number of congressmen. The founding fathers did agree that the number of representatives is very important in relation to the size of the population.

Answer 8

Good question.

Even if you had the right to vote on the bills yourselves, which might not be a bad idea, you would still need professional politicians to agree on the contents of the bill. After all, you don't want career technocrats deciding what you get to vote on, do you? You want democratically elected officials, right?

Unfortunately, and I wish it weren't so, direct democracy only really works with very, very small nation-states. Like classical Athens. In a country the size of the USA, it's just too big, even if you could have secure internet voting (and even then, the Republicans would find a way to cheat).

Answer 9

Because we would be voting every week for different bills. There is a tremendous amount of research before one can make an informed decision.

Who has time for that?

That is why we elect representatives and senators for.

Answer 10

Members of congress represent you. You elected that person in, remember when you voted? You did vote didn't you? See, that's how a democracy works - the people vote in the members of our government, those people represent us on capital hill, then our bills are passed or vetoed. If your congressman isn't the one you voted in then maybe you should run and do the voting yourself.

Answer 11

Well first who would write the bills and second how would we have any sort of public forum debates on the bills. Also they are endlessly complicated and take a bit of knowledge that some Americans lack to understand the intricacies of written laws.