Here’s how you can get involved with social change politics
Thinking about a person's life is funny. Funny as in ironic. Backed up by no specific statistics, I would say 95% of the worlds people make no significant impact on improving the Earth's situation for better. And by the earth's situation I mean, its government, people, basic global operations.
I have been thinking about my own life in this way. I'm not a brainiac or a scientist. I'm not going to formulate some political bill or discover the next cure for cancer. My impact is so small it could be laughable, but I try to do it anyways. I stand by my ideas and spread good where I can.
I started thinking about government representatives and how partisan they are. Why can't they just vote according to the people they represent (or by their own views for that matter). What if a representative took polls online, posted upcoming bills they would be voting on and simply listened to the people in the district they represent?
Districts could have email alerts sent when a bill was going to be voted on and Internet cafes available for polls on how people in that district thought. This would not only help people share their voice, but open up Internet access to those who don't have it.
The lobbyists, corporations and other politically steering factors would be (somewhat) eliminated and a representative could help the people in the ways they actually want. Sure, they could take the public's views with a grain of salt (we aren't all experts). But, voting with the first or even second highest percentages of a poll would give a voice back to the people, which hasn't been very predominate against the loud roar of "politics as usual."
An example of this type of "social change politics" in the U.S. could be this:
A bill comes to the House of Representatives or Congress. A few weeks before, representatives send an email alert to their district. This email alert would also be displayed in city halls, Websites, Internet cafes and other places, to make it easily accessible. For those who would like to vote on the issue they could log on via a user name and password through the specific district's Website (address would be a main indicator that they were eligible to vote in that district). Here there would be a poll something like this (with a link to the complete bill and a non-bias short description):
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Are you in favor of the Clean Water Act in Minnesota District 191?
(For more information on the Clean Water Act visit cleanwateract.gov.)
Yes.
No.
In between.
Please comment any changes you would like to see to the bill.
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No system is perfect and ours certainly isn't (do I need to say Franken v Coleman... yes, that's still going on), but opening up voting and discussion forums on bills would be a way to hear what the public is saying. Power to the people anyone?
This post was originally published by Tristan Pollock on Blogger.