Proposal. When you elect a congressperson you get a little program for your phone, or on a dedicated device. It's basically a tamagotchi avatar of your congress person. You can feed them, and they can send you messages and their votes show up like little achievements so you can praise or scold them.
If you neglect them too much they "die" and your vote is withdrawn. If they loose too much confidence (too many let them die) they are out of office and there is a special election.
@futurebird But seriously an app that lets you know every time your Congress critters vote on a bill and how they voted, with various tally views, would be huge. You could add their committee votes if you wanted.
@futurebird Communications to and from our reps GREAT idea! But, seeing the current actions of MAGA/GOP people this shows me the general public needs time to process NOT knee jerk response access. Politics requires a steady hand on the tiller, not “wack a mole” likes and dislikes. We need changes to our system though. Keep voting!!!
many people, even voters, do not care about everyday politics, so many would simply let the tamagotchi die and the remaining, more politically motivated, would determine the fate of it
the voting system may be used by influencing organizations (lobbying etc) to engineer social media campaigns to "kill" the tamagotchi, get rid of an undesired representative and get a new election to place "their guy" in office
@futurebird I want the app hooked up to a shock collar so that we can send 👍 or 👎 in response to every vote, and every time the difference between the two aggregate responses goes over (say) 1000, they get zapped if the people are mad and a small donation if the response is positive.
On the other, there needs to be room for pragmatism (as opposed to just selling out).
Events happen (pandemics, wars etc) and priorities have to change accordingly. Maybe your favourite cause gets sidelined to compromise to get some other cause that maybe helps more people. Politics can be messy.
In the UK, where I lived for a long time, one problem with the political system is that the members of parliament have to be popular locally in their constituency, so you hear more about them opening shopping centres and visiting nursing homes rather than what policies they pursue in the national parliament.