"Vote da Bums out"

Currently in America, we know 2 things about the Federal Government in Washington D.C.

1) Politicians lie, cheat, and basically do anything at all they have to, to get elected and to stay in once they are incumbents.

2) Congress had accomplished nothing substantive in all of the last several sessions.

(Whether this is actually true or not, is actually secondary just now. Every American who pays any attention at all to politics knows it.)

This sort of thing has happened before, there are many web sites with variations of "vote the bums out" or "kick them all out", referring to both houses of Congress, dating back at least a decade, and even earlier, if you check before the internet.

I don't feel that this will necessarily solve anything. Just voting out everyone across Congress, no matter what, might just clean house, but the problem is deeper than just that.

I like Alan Moore, in V for Vendetta: "people shouldn't fear their governments, governments should fear their people."
Or at least, respect them, and help them. That's what they're supposed to be sent to Washington to do, after all.

Now, my idea is a variation of "vote the bums out". It will require a bit more effort (sorry), but the little extra will be well worth the result. If we can stick to it.

It requires that we all, every American citizen, tracks our own representatives, in both the House and the Senate, to see how they vote on laws that come up. If their votes agree with your views and needs, you can vote to keep them in. If their votes don't agree with you, or their votes will do you harm, then next election, remember and vote for the other candidate, no matter who it is. And talk to anybody who does exit polls on election day, post on social media, even write to the person you voted for (and the one you voted against) exactly why you did it.

After an election cycle or two, all members of Congress will start to see that it doesn't matter how much dark money they've acquired from their rich donors; it doesn't even matter how the campaign commercials go; what matters is their actual voting. If they don't vote on laws to help you, you don't vote to keep them in power. Simple.

Don't worry; it's not that hard to track voting. govtrack.us provides a simple voting summary. Going to this page, will allow you to set up a tracker, based on your address, that will notify you, via email or RSS feed, whenever your own senators and district representative votes on anything.

Once you see how your own representatives are voting on issues that matter to you, you can determine whether to keep them or vote them out. And if you vote against them, but they stay in, that must mean that (barring electoral fraud) most people in your district like what they're doing. But, hey, that's how democracy is supposed to work.

If we all do this, the big money types that buy and sell influence with politicians won't be able to keep a politician in office for long, unless they start caring about what we the people want and need.

One catch is, this could take years, maybe decades, to really take hold. Washington DC seems to now have an attitude of "well, they're upset right now; let's wait them out, they'll stop paying attention soon" or even worse, "let's throw a manufactured crisis at them, that'll distract them from thinking about us." We will need to keep at this for several elections, until the politicians start to really realize that we mean it; you vote against us, we'll vote against you. When that finally sinks in, we'll have taken back our country from that minotiry who want it to serve them, and have the resources to block our access to our own representatives.

The other catch is, we need EVERYBODY to get on board with this. Most people have email nowadays, so we just need folks to agree to watch their congresspeople and see how they vote. And to vote against them when they vote against you. If you have email and know someone who doesn't, you can offer to track their rep for them, and let them know. If your local public library has internet, anyone can go there and get online to check.

 If everybody, or even many, citizens follow through with this, we can make this a representative democracy again, instead of the rich folk calling all the shots, since the politicians owe them for their money donations.

We the people need to start paying attention to the votes, not the election hype. We need to hold our representative accountable for how they vote. We need to make sure that the richest few don't get outsized influence, simply because they can buy and sell political careers.

I hold out hope that we can do this. That we will do this. And that we will reshape our country to what it could be, what it once was; Abraham Lincoln's "government of the people, by the people, for the people." We live in the greatest age for access to any information that could possibly be desired; let's use it.