The government we have is not the government you think we have.

1. Two Party System

It's no mystery to me as to why there aren't more than two political parties featured in most elections. I believe it's because our system of voting favors existing parties with it's "winner take all" vote counting tradition. Without new thinking, such as instant run off vote counting, voters are stuck with having to make choices that don't really reflect their true will.

This situation has seriously eroded our democracy. Currently, in three way races, a candidate with less than a majority of votes but more votes than any of his or her competitors wins, even though a majority of the voters voted for another candidate. Voters are stuck with the risk of "wasting their vote" if they merely wish to support the candidate they truly want in office. they This is an absurd situation that continues year after year.

Sure, one can blame third parties for failing to field strong candidates, or lacking effective campaign organizations, but odds against winning or even gathering a vote count that represents their true support saps them of the support they need because the voters are motivated by a basic fear, "If I vote for you then I won't be supporting my second choice and my third and last choice will win."

The result is that new ideas are often left on the sidelines if the two major parties don't find them interesting and bring them out in debate. The two major parties actually function like a single party on many issues because there is not enough pressure to bring more sides to the debate. Most people I know would be upset if they thought we had a single party system. Isn't that what the Communists did in the USSR? Unfortunately, we are doing a very similar thing. We just don't like to think about it that way.

2. Ratio of Representation

The ratio of population to representatives in Washington D.C. has reached absurd proportions. When our federal government was founded and under way in 1790, there were 65,000 people represented by each member of the House of Representatives. Now there are more than ten times that many. You can check it out for yourself. Just divide the number of representatives then by the US population, taken in the very first census. Like it or not, many of those people were not voters (women, not of voting age, not property owners, incarcerated, illiterate, slaves, etc.). Perhaps some of those were not even counted, but today's counts probably miss a substantial proportion anyway.

As a result, a House member had a fraction of that number to communicate with while in office. Hand written and hand delivered letters and messages were the primary means of communication from a constituent and back (no telegraph, telephones, not even a pony express yet). There were also newspapers, of course, but as today, they could only describe a small fraction of the issues surrounding each piece of legislation being discussed in the House.

But more to the point was that, as slow as it may seem by today's standards, direct communication with one's representative was quite likely. If a percentage of those who were able to read and write and were eligible to vote took the time to write, then a representative might receive a few hundred letters in a year, perhaps a few per day on average, easily few enough to read personally.

Compare that with today. With the number of representatives fixed at 435 and the population of the United States at just under 300 million, each representative stands for 670,000 on average, or approximately 2/3 of a million people. With today's increased voter eligibility and electronic communication, a representative's office might receive a few thousand email messages, phone calls, and mailed letters per day. Going the other way, for that representative to get information out to that same number of people is just as daunting a task. Sure we have national television and the internet, etc., but with the complexity and volume of legislation and issues today, it's no wonder that we seem out of touch with government.

3. Intermediate Representation

Although some of us still make an effort to communicate directly, it's clear that we have developed a second tier of representation. That is, we have brought in a number of people to represent us to our representatives. On the one hand, a legislator must hire a staff to plow through the flood of messages reaching his or her office. So those staff members are, in a way, an intermediate level of representation. But in addition to that, we have many other people to represent us. They're called lobbyists.

Now, you might not think that lobbyists represent you, but I beg to differ. I maintain that they do in fact represent you, every one of them. That's because, ultimately, you pay for them to be there. Clearly, when you donate money to a non-profit group, such as the Sierra Club or the NRA, you are directly supporting lobbyists. But when you spend money on anything, from gasoline to toothpaste, potato chips to lawn mowers, part of what you spend goes to support lobbyists. Practically every industry has one or more than one to influence legislation in Congress.

So, just by living in this society and buying the goods and services you do, you are participating in government, just not in a way that you'd expect. These businesses are actually representing your interests by ensuring a steady supply of the goods and services you actually buy at the price you're willing to pay. If you don't think those are your interests, that doesn't matter. Where you spend your money is all that matters in this 'shadow democracy,' not your intentions.

Of course, since this representation on Capitol Hill is mostly "out of sight, out of mind" to us in our every day lives, it means that we are "unintentionally represented" in this way. Sure, it's "democracy" but it's a distorted form of it that most of us never think about. It's based on financial means and activity. It's more "one dollar, one vote" instead of "one man, one vote." Not exactly what the founding fathers had in mind, would you think?