Editorial: Representative Democracy, part 2
By Scott Walker, M.D.
Dear Neighbors,
Previously, I wrote about two things which weaken our representative democracy, and the first of those was the increasing separation between the representatives and the people they represent. There has always been a gender gap (women make up 50.5 percent of the country’s population but only 28 percent of Congress) and a racial gap (40 percent of the country’s population is non-white but in Congress, they only make up 25 percent).
These two disparities have not disappeared quickly enough. More recently, there has been an education gap, with 95 percent of members of Congress holding at least a bachelor’s degree. Then there’s wealth. The median net worth of a U.S. household is just over $120,000; the median net worth of a member of Congress is well over $1 million.
When half of Crawford County’s households earn less than $70,000 per year, it’s fair to wonder if a millionaire really knows what occupies our minds.
Politics also seems to draw from a narrow range of occupations, including law, real estate or working for someone in politics. There was a time (1976 to 2011) when Wisconsin provided public campaign financing for State Legislative races and placed limits on spending. During this time, the Legislature drew more widely from professions such as education, agriculture and health care. In the fifteen years since the system was removed, the previous composition has largely returned.
How many people in the Legislature share your occupation?
I called the bond between the elected and the electors “the first trestle” supporting representative democracy. Both new and inherent stressors have weakened that bond to the point where protesters are willing to defecate in public spaces to show their displeasure. To strengthen this first trestle, we have to increase the interactions between the representatives and those they represent, so that trust can be built.
To make sure that our representatives to the legislature are close to the people they represent, and to make more opportunities for trust-building interactions, I suggest making more representatives. Four times more of them.
I propose increasing the size of Wisconsin’s State Assembly to 396 Representatives, of whom only one quarter — or 99 — would participate in person (same as today). All sessions of the House and all committee meetings and hearings would involve three-fourths of the Members appearing by Zoom from home or some public space. In every district where we now have one Representative, we would have four — the top four vote-getters in the relevant election.
If we had three of these four members of the State House working from home while the Assembly was in session, then those Representatives would be readily available to the voters of their district who want to offer feedback on the day’s debates. One member of every four (chosen by lot or seniority) would have to decamp to Madison, fending off the corrupting influence of lobbyists while attending to their duties in person in the Capitol. The likelihood of voters knowing a representative personally would go up. Voters would feel that they can have an impact on the people who vote on their behalf while the debate is going on and not just after the fact, at election time.
I understand the constitutional challenge here, but the current majority in the State Legislature seems willing to amend the Constitution at the drop of a hat. Why not this hat? People on both sides of the current political divide have called for more people to be involved in the political process. This just might do it.
Part two of three in a series on representative democracy.
