Congress Accountable to Citizens – the Boss/Employee Relationship

This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series Real Accountability

In this post, I’ll answer the first of the three questions posed in the last article, how to create the first part of accountability. How do we establish the boss-employee relationship with our elected officials?

  • How can we have a relationship with our representatives?
  • How can we voters be the boss?
  • How can we know what we collectively want?
  • How can we guide our representatives and know what results to expect?

One way to do this is by citizens voting on issues and seeing the results, for our districts and states as well as for the country.

By voting on issues, we guide our politicians.

Currently, they don’t know what we want, so they guess. Many read their mail and email and write down what people tell them in phone calls. Plus they read letters to the editor. And then they guess. Sometimes they spend a few thousand dollars on polling. After some largely uninformed, surprised citizens give their opinions, they guess.

By voting on issues, we’d be able to give our opinions. By voting on a website we can return to, we can inform ourselves by reading, talking to friends about it or seeing what a trusted expert says. We can guide our politicians with an informed decision.

By seeing the results, we’ll be able to set our expectations

The results for our district tell us what our congressional representative should work for, how to represent us. The results for our state tell us what our senators should work for.

The results for the country clue us into what we can expect, what’s reasonable.

If the country is split 50-50, or 55-45, we can expect a fight. Even at 60-40, a compromise is probably in order.

Seeing the results, acting as the boss becomes possible

Currently, not knowing what we collectively want, we don’t know what our officials are accountable for. It’s no wonder they’re not accountable to us with this basic foundation missing.

Now imagine we see the results of voting on issues. Each of us can see that together, we-the-people have guided our politicians. We have a good idea what they’re accountable for. We can begin to act like the boss.

In the next post, we’ll look at the essence of accountability, answerability.

Series Navigation<< What is Needed to Create Real Political Accountability?Answerability is Key for Congress to be Accountable to Citizens >>
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About Rand Strauss

Rand Strauss is the Founder of PeopleCount.org, a nonpartisan plan to enable the public to communicate constructively with each other and government by taking stands on crucial political issues. It will enable us to hold government accountable and have it be an expression of our will. Connect with Rand and PeopleCount.org on Facebook. Or leave a comment on an article (they won't display until approved.)

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