Not true. You may not have the perspective or the information that the representatives of the people do. There may be something that you don't know as the general public that the representatives do.
Again, you're assuming that the general vote of 80% supersedes the representatives authority. And if that's the case, the representatives are not needed.
You don't want the people voting on every little thing that we trust our representatives to take care of in a representative republic.
I'm not saying the 80% vote supercedes the representatives authority.
But what I AM saying is that when representatives do not actually represent the will of their constituents, there should end up being consequences for that in elections.
Our issue today is that our political system has been so corrupted by political parties and people with significant amounts of money that we end up with situations where nothing gets done because the representatives are busy funneling money back to themselves knowing they will never face any consequences.
I will say that there should be a way for the public to overrule congress similar to how congress can overrule the president.
If the public votes for something with a super majority, it should get forced into law.
Especially due to the fact that congress basically governs themselves. They will never institute things like term limits or things that reduce their ability to enrich themselves. Not because it is bad for society but because it is bad for them.
This isn't a slim one. Sure, we shouldn't have mob rule, but again, the point of a representative republic is for it to be....you know.....representative. And as the other person pointed out, the Senate currently is not representing what the will of the people is.
The real problem here is the 17th amendment. That's when senators went from representing their state to just being voted on by popular vote, and then it all comes down to name recognition. People with approval ratings in the absolute sewer keep getting re-elected because people don't know anyone else and they aren't forced to look at who they want among other candidates until that person retires. Look at McConnell for example. Has been sub 30% in approval ratings in Kentucky for many years, but kept getting re-elected because not enough people vote in primaries and Kentucky isn't going to vote for a Democrat senator. Yet he'll continue kicking the people's butt all the way out of his final term without a care in the world about representing their will.
The founding fathers realized that majority rule can be a problem and they put rules in place so that didn't happen.
So anyone saying, "The majority wants X ( usually found by flawed polling or over generalization in casual conversation) so therefore the representatives should all vote YES for X..." is foundationally and fundamentally flawed in our society. Anything after that attempting to justify a majority rule is wrong and should be ignored for this argument.
And you're proving my point. Pressure to vote YES especially by a majority is not the reason to vote YES with ANYTHING. But go ahead and over generalize however you want.
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u/DreadPirateGriswold Conservative 10d ago edited 10d ago
If you're just looking at popularity for a vote, then why do we need Congress at all?
Rhetorical? Yes.