Polls commonly find that Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the government. According to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News in October of 2011, “89 percent of Americans said they distrust government to do the right thing.” An August 2012 poll found that “Ten percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.” A New York Times/CBS News Poll published in February 2010 found that 80 percent of Americans believe members of Congress are more interested in serving special interests than the people they represent.

Is this democracy? Is our government really of, by, and for the people?

Our government is a direct reflection of the processes we use to hire and control our government leaders, and it is inconceivable that it could be any better than these processes are. In order to understand why our government is the way that it is, we must look objectively at those processes. Since businesses exist in a competitive environment that forces them to improve and innovate in order to survive, it is instructive to contrast our democratic processes with equivalent business processes.

Consider the difference in hiring practices:

Business executives know that one of the most important keys to building a successful company is hiring the best possible people, and they have carefully designed processes in place to ensure that this happens. First, job candidates are carefully sourced using the best means available, and anyone not meeting certain requirements is screened out. Each candidate then participates in multiple interviews with the person he will be accountable to and others he will be working with—all of whom are intimately familiar with the job requirements. Candidates are often given tests, and multiple references are generally checked.

The elections we use to hire our government leaders are the polar opposite of this.

In our democracy, anyone who meets a few minimal criteria can run for any political office. Candidates are freebooting political entrepreneurs for whom political office is a prize that must be fought for. They raise money—primarily from special interests who have an interest in government policy—and use that money to mount a political marketing campaign to influence citizens to vote for them.

The first priority of any political campaign is building name recognition. In this contest, incumbents, movie stars, sports stars, and war heroes have an enormous advantage from the very start. For others, yard signs, mass mailings, and television commercials play an important role.

It is also important for candidates to choose a clever campaign slogan that draws attention to a certain theme that they want to be remembered by. Campaign slogans such as “Change we can believe in” and “Believe in America” are very much equivalent to product marketing slogans such as “Good to the last drop” and “Finger lickin’ good!”

Candidates must also project a likeable persona that people can feel comfortable with. It is impractical for the average voter to understand the job description of each office they elect, what each of the candidates for all of these offices actually represent, and the vast array of issues the government deals with, so people instead decide whom to vote for primarily based on the candidate’s personality, image, authenticity, and vibe.

Since the ratio of citizens to candidates is one to many thousands or millions, only a tiny fraction of citizens are able to have direct contact with candidates and their elected officials. Nearly all citizens must therefore rely entirely on others in order to understand candidates and the political world. In a very real sense, their entire political reality is created by others.

The news media is most people’s primary source of political information, but the news media is not accountable to citizens or to candidates. Rather, the news media is accountable to shareholders and advertisers. Citizens, by and large, receive the news as a free service. Members of the news media are free to cover what they choose and present it however they wish. Their primary interest is in maintaining a large audience for advertisers, and in order to do this they must keep their content entertaining. Thus, the news media acts as a lens that gives people a view of candidates and of the government that is deeply flawed.

Candidates must similarly rely on the news media to communicate with citizens—they live and die by the coverage they receive. To the degree that they are able, the news is a screen upon which candidates attempt to project a desired image, and that image becomes more important than reality itself. News becomes a tool with which candidates attempt to shape public opinion, and controlling the images the public receives is central to their success.

This environment allows candidates and any other interested parties to promote competing views of reality that serve their own interests using advertising and public relations. Many candidates have found it to be very effective for them to promote a reality that vilifies their opponents and instills fear over the prospect of their opponent winning. Well-financed special interests also commonly join the fray, and they have become stunningly successful at framing the public debate on issues that concern them, and at compromising the image of candidates who oppose them.

Is this an acceptable method of hiring the people who hold the most important jobs in our society?

The differences between how businesses and government are run are equally stark.

The central, most fundamental principal that allows large businesses to exist and operate is delegation. As a rule, all large businesses are organized hierarchically, with each layer of management delegating responsibility to people in the layer below. Each link in the hierarchy consists of a relationship between a manager and his direct reports. The number of people each manager is responsible for is small enough to allow for effective two-way communication between themselves and their direct reports on an on-going basis. Everyone in the hierarchy is held accountable by their manager on an ongoing basis, thus creating ongoing accountability throughout the organization. This allows CEOs to manage their companies and achieve business goals by working through a small number of top managers.

Organizing in this way has allowed businesses to be stunningly successful and to achieve amazing things. Rather than distancing managers from the business, delegation magnifies their ability to control the business and increases what they are able to accomplish exponentially. This system of management is universally accepted, and the effectiveness of it is questioned by no one.

In our democracy, citizens are the CEOs, and voting is the primary means by which they participate. Yet a vote is a binary form of communication that conveys nothing more than a yes or a no. As such, it comes with an implicit assumption that there will be on-going two-way communication between voters and the winner after the election to discuss what the person elected should do while in office. But since each elected official has many thousands or millions of constituents, real two-way communication is impossible for more than a tiny few. How is representation possible when real communication is impossible?

Is it realistic to expect that such processes would create a good government, or one that works in the interest of the people?

Some have said that—because we live in a democracy—we get the government we deserve. But that is to assume that people are made for democracy, rather than democracy being made for the people. We call our system of government a “democracy” because mass voting looks like an idealized version of democracy. Elections are held and the people who win run the government, but is that all that is required to have a democracy? Does good government—or government that actually reflects the will of the people—matter at all?

When people think of this problem, they typically define democracy simply as the way we do things now—citizens voting en masse directly for office holders—and reason that since that is democracy, anything else is out of the question. But shouldn’t democracy be defined according to whether a system produces a government that is of, by, and for the people, rather than simply whether citizens can vote in elections? People are also prone to thinking that, since there are so many citizens, it is impossible for everyone to have a voice in government. This too is based on the assumption that democracy is defined as how we do things now, which clearly does make real participation impossible.

Is some other form of democracy possible?

One of the most fundamental assumptions of our current system of democracy is that the people must be politically informed and make good voting decisions. Yet surveys have demonstrated overwhelmingly that most voters are woefully ignorant about politics, and they have been for as long as surveys have been taken. Barely a third  of citizens can recall the name of their U.S. Congressman/woman, and less than one-half know that there are two U.S. Senators from their state. Only 66 percent of the population can name their own state’s governor, and only 20 percent can name their representative in their state’s legislature.

There has been a great deal of agonizing over how dismally informed citizens are, but could the fact that people are so dismally informed be proof that our expectations for them are unrealistic?

Many people watch, listen to, or read the news on a regular basis, and for this reason consider themselves well informed. But studies have found that even the best informed citizens know next to nothing about their individual elected officials and what they have done in office. Since we vote for individuals in elections, and individuals do the work of representing us, isn’t it their actions that are important? If this is the case, general information about things such as partisan warfare, political scandals, and the failings of government doesn’t make someone informed.

Underlying the assumption that citizens must be informed is another assumption—that people must only be expected to be informed about things that they can realistically understand, and responsible for voting for people and positions they can realistically make good decisions about.  Wouldn’t it be silly to base a system of government on unrealistic expectations?

Consider what people are expected to understand:

Every citizen is responsible for electing multiple candidates to offices at the national, state, and local levels of government, and to the executive, legislative, and in some cases judicial branches at each level. While in office, each office holder works on dozens of issues covering an extremely wide range of topics. Many of those topics—such as health care, how to deal with crime, or improving the education system—are fantastically complex, with many fields of expertise within each of them. This is an immense amount of complexity. From the standpoint of a single person, it’s almost infinitely complex. Is there any reason to expect that individual citizens could understand these things well enough to make good voting decisions?

Most people have very busy lives, with many more pressing and interesting things to do than following politics. The vast majority of political issues are extremely boring and tedious, and have no direct, immediate impact on people’s lives. Thus, government feels very distant from them. Is there any reason to expect that people would want to follow such things? It’s as if it’s only voting that matters, with good decisions not mattering at all.

Surveys have found that Americans are deeply dissatisfied with Congress. As recently as three months ago, the Gallup organization found that 90 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 8 percent think Congress is doing a good job. A New York Times/CBS News Poll survey published in February 2010 found that 80 percent of Americans believe members of Congress were more interested in serving special interests than the people they represent.

Under these circumstances, you would expect that 90+ percent of the Members of Congress would have lost their jobs in the recent election. But instead, 91 percent of those who ran for re-election won! If ever there was an indication that democracy in American is broken, this is it.

As it turns out, Congressional re-election rates this high are quite normal. Only rarely are less than 90 percent of the Members of the House of Representatives re-elected. And while the Senate is more competitive, it is rare for less than 80 percent of Senators to be re-elected. Senator Tom Colburn described the situation well when he said, “In several election cycles in recent history, more incumbents died in office than lost reelection bids.” Members of Congress enjoy some of the best job security in America—and the least amount of accountability.

How can this happen?

The typical explanation for this phenomenon is that incumbents have an advantage because they are able to raise more money and mount a stronger campaign, and have better name recognition and a good reputation from bringing home the bacon during their term in office. But is this really enough to overcome an approval rating as low as 10 percent? There must be something else going on.

Consider the following: According to The New American Democracy, “barely a third of the citizenry can recall the name of their [U.S. House of Representatives] representative, and even fewer can remember anything he or she has done for the district. Only about one in ten people can remember how their representative voted on a particular bill.” According to the American Thinker, only 27 percent of citizens can name both of their U.S. Senators.

In our democracy, it is primary elections that are the most important, since this is where voters have the biggest choice of candidates. Yet, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, only 15.9 percent of all eligible citizens participated in the 2012 statewide primary elections, in which candidates for Congress are nominated. It seems reasonable to assume that since most citizens know so little about their representatives in office, they are likely to know even less—or nothing at all—about the candidates competing in the primary. If this is the case, they are likely to ask themselves, “why bother?”

The few people who do vote in the primaries tend to be members of special interest groups that the incumbents have worked hard to turn into supporters. These voters reward incumbents for policy favors they’ve received by voting for them in the primary election. For others who vote, the incumbent has credibility from having previously won office, and has on-the-job experience, while challengers are likely to be totally unknown. People are highly unlikely to vote for candidates who they know nothing about. This allows most incumbents to breeze through primary elections.

The general election presents voters with drastically simplified choices, as most are given the option of only a Democrat and a Republican (and perhaps a few unknowns representing obscure parties). Surveys have found that two-thirds of voters openly identify with either the Democratic or Republican parties and vote for candidates of that party the vast majority of the time. Of the remaining voters—“independents”—about two-thirds of them also favor one party over the other, and vote for candidates of that party the vast majority of the time.

In cases where incumbents are members of voters’ preferred party, voters may not be fans of the incumbent, but they see voting for the incumbent as a lesser evil than voting for someone representing the opposing party—which they likely see as the source of the problems to begin with. The effect of this is that in districts where a clear majority of voters are supporters of one party over the other—which is the case in most districts—incumbents of that party have extremely good job security. Districts that are closely divided are where most turnover occurs.

It seems, then, that Congressional job security is due to partisanship and voter ignorance.

As I have written elsewhere, political parties are marketing organizations—brand names, teams complete with colors and mascots that serve the needs of ambitious politicians and the special interests that fund them. They promote ideologies that are carefully framed to justify their actions, inflame voters by vilifying their opposition, and influence (manipulate) people to support them.

There is nothing about political parties that work for citizens, other than as a heuristic that simplifies a complex political world and makes voting decisions easier. Anyone can run as a Democrat or Republican, which means a party label means next to nothing. When voters rely on party labels they are in effect overlooking the candidates and freeing them of all accountability.

Political parties exist only because of the enormous complexity of the government and the vast distance between citizens and the government, which makes it impossible for citizens to understand it to any sufficient level of depth. Parties simplify the political world into red and blue so citizens can feel comfortable with voting choices and participate in elections.

Partisanship is therefore merely a symptom of the public’s inability to understand an enormously complex, vastly distant government—voter ignorance.

It is important to put this into the proper perspective. Citizens are expected to elect candidates at the national, state, and local level who are running for a wide variety of offices in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Once elected, each office holder will work on a wide variety of issues. In order to make informed voting decisions, voters need to understand the job responsibilities of each of these offices, as well as who the candidates are, what they represent, and what they have done in the past. This is an immense task—an impossible task—particularly for people who have busy lives full of more interesting and pressing things than following politics.

Many people watch, listen to, or read the news on a regular basis, and for this reason consider themselves well informed. But studies have found that even the best informed citizens know next to nothing about the actions of their individual elected officials. Since we vote for individuals in elections and they do the work of representing us, it is their actions that are important. General information about things such as partisan warfare, political scandals, and the failings of government doesn’t help. We seem to have simply ignored this problem and assumed that the only thing that matters is citizens casting votes in elections, with good decisions not mattering at all.

There is no escaping the fact that, in order to have a good government, citizens must be able to make truly good voting decisions about the individual candidates in elections. Expecting otherwise is a fantasy.

(It is important to mention that much has been said about the influence of money on elections. Money is used to mount campaigns to influence the public. The public is highly subject to influence, but only because people are uninformed and disconnected from a vastly distant, enormously complex government.)

But since citizens are so distant and disconnected from the government, does this mean that democracy is a fantasy?

It is a little known fact that the Framers of our Constitution had a great deal of fear of direct elections as they exist today. One of the reasons the Articles of Confederation were considered a failure is that the people were found to be making bad decisions in elections. It was widely believed by the Framers that America suffered from an excess of democracy. “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy” said Elbridge Gerry of the Massachusetts delegation. Fellow delegate Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph said “The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

The Framers knew that indirect elections—voters electing representatives who elected other representatives—was the key to overcoming this problem. That is why we have an Electoral College, U.S. Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President, and why U.S. Senators were to be elected by the state legislatures. Most governors were indirectly elected in the early republic as well. In the national government, only members of the House of Representatives were elected directly by the people, and they were given mere two-year terms.

Over time, the fears of the Framers were forgotten and a series of reforms gradually replaced indirect elections with direct elections. This was not because direct elections were found to create a better government, but because they were thought to be more “democratic.” Today, we define democracy as a system of elections where citizens vote directly for candidates running for office, simply because that happens to be the way it’s done now.

As it turns out, we are now extremely adept at doing things indirectly in every other area of our lives.

Our complex society is built entirely on the use of delegation, which is accomplishing things indirectly through others: We don’t build the homes we live in ourselves—we hire a contractor who buys materials from a variety of stores, which in turn get goods from suppliers. CEOs of large corporations don’t try to hire all of their employees themselves—they hire managers, who often hire other managers, who in turn hire employees. We don’t grow our own food—we get it from the grocery store, which gets it from distributors, which gets it from farmers. Nearly everything in our society is accomplished via a chain of people, with each person in the chain having a reasonable amount of responsibility.

Following this line of thinking, the Framers created a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy. But for some reason, we are now stuck on the idea of having only one layer of representatives. If we are willing to delegate government work to one level of representatives, why not more levels?

Additional levels would mean having much smaller election districts—which I will call communities—with each of these communities having a single representative. This would allow citizens to actually get to know candidates for that position, have two-way conversations with them, and make informed voting decisions. It would bring citizens closer to government and give them more control over by connecting them to it via a chain of connected representatives.

An example of how this might work is as follows: Citizens would elect a community representative, who would in turn elect the district’s representative to the state legislature, who would in turn elect that district’s Member of Congress, who would in turn elect the president. Groups participating in elections at each level would need to be kept small enough to allow those representatives to make good decisions when electing their representative at the next level. How this is actually arranged would vary from place to place based on population.

Democracy that works smoothly and efficiently and that truly serves the needs of the people is possible. But to get there we must allow ourselves to accept that our current way of doing things is fundamentally broken and open our minds to other possibilities.

We have thought through such a system of democracy, and we call it Local Electors, which is the name we’ve given to the community representatives. You can find out more about it at www.localelectors.org.

The most frightening thing about our current situation is that since citizens are so distant and disconnected from the government, they experience a diffusion of responsibility. Simply reading the news and voting every few years gives people a sense that they are doing their part, and that they don’t need to do anything more. Everyone assumes that someone else will take responsibility, so no one does.

The results of the recent Congressional elections should be a red light telling us that our government is not in the control of the people. This is a very dangerous situation. If people are unwilling to do something now, we will surely pay dearly for it in the not-too-distant future. We need to have a conversation about how to solve this problem. Please take responsibility yourself and send this article to others so that conversation can begin.

It is interesting to note that businesses, non-profits, and virtually all organizations share a common method of hiring leaders, while the elections we use in our democracy are dramatically different. Since businesses are ubiquitous to our society and their success has made America the great and powerful nation that it is, it is interesting to contrast how differently business leaders and political leaders are hired.

Business executives know that one of the most important keys to building a successful company is hiring the best possible people, and they have carefully-designed processes in place to ensure that this happens. First, job candidates are carefully sourced using the best means available, and anyone not meeting certain requirements is screened out. Each candidate then participates in multiple interviews with the person he will be accountable to and others he will be working with—all of whom are intimately familiar with the job requirements. Candidates are often given tests, and multiple references are generally checked. This process could be described as logical and professional.

The elections we use to hire our government leaders are the polar opposite of this.

In our democracy, anyone who meets a few minimal criteria can run for any political office. Candidates are freebooting political entrepreneurs for whom political office is a prize that must be fought for. They raise money—primarily from special interests who have an interest in government policy—and use that money to mount a political marketing campaign to influence citizens to vote for them.

The first priority of any political campaign is building name recognition. Thus, incumbents, movie stars, sports stars, and astronauts have an enormous advantage. For others, yard signs, mass mailings, and television commercials play an important role. It is also important for candidates to choose a clever campaign slogan that draws attention to a certain theme that they want to be remembered by. Campaign slogans such as “Change we can believe in” and “Believe in America” are very much equivalent to product marketing slogans such as “Good to the last drop” and “Finger lickin’ good!”

Most importantly, candidates must project a likeable persona that people feel comfortable with. It is impractical for the average voter to understand the vast array of issues the government deals with, the job description of each office they elect, and what each candidate for all of these offices actually represent, so people decide whom to vote for primarily based on the candidate’s personality, image, authenticity, and vibe.

Since the ratio of citizens to candidates is one to many thousands or millions, only a tiny fraction of citizens are able to have direct contact with candidates and their elected officials. Nearly all citizens must therefore rely entirely on others in order to understand the candidates and the political world. In a very real sense, their entire political reality is created by others.

The news media is most people’s primary source of political information, but the news media is not accountable to citizens or to candidates. Rather, the news media is accountable to shareholders and advertisers. Citizens, by and large, receive the news as a free service. Members of the news media are free to cover what they choose and present it how they wish. Their primary interest is in maintaining a large audience for advertisers, and in order to do this they must keep their content entertaining. Thus, the news media acts as a lens that gives people a view of candidates and of the government that leaves much to be desired.

Candidates must similarly rely on the news media to communicate with citizens—they live and die by the coverage they receive. To the degree that they are able, the news is a screen upon which candidates attempt to project a desired image, and that image becomes more important than reality itself. News becomes a tool with which candidates attempt to shape public opinion, and controlling the images the public receives is central to their success. The news also serves as a mirror that reflects back the public’s reaction and opinion of their actions. Thus, candidates tend to see the news as a reflection of reality, which in an important sense it is.

This environment allows candidates and any other interested parties to promote competing views of reality that serve their own interests using marketing and public relations. Many candidates have found it to be very effective for them to promote a reality that vilifies their opponents and instills fear over the prospect of their opponent winning. Well-financed special interests have become stunningly successful at framing the public debate on issues that concern them, and at compromising the image of candidates who oppose them.

Voting itself is a binary form of communication that conveys nothing more than a yes or a no. As such, it comes with an implicit assumption that there will be two-way communication between voters and the winner after the election to discuss what the person elected should do once in office. But since each elected official has many thousands or millions of constituents, real two-way communication is impossible for more than a tiny few. Most people never convey their wants and needs to their representatives, and thus effectively go unrepresented—despite having voted.

Our process of elections could be described as totally illogical and highly manipulative. You might even call it garbage.

From this perspective, it should be of little surprise that our politics are often characterized by hysteria. Our government is a battleground on which two political parties are engaged in continuous warfare. Politicians are constantly blaming each other for problems and insisting that they themselves are righteous. Special interests have an enormous amount of control in government, while individual citizens have almost none. Multiple preemptive wars, $16+ trillion in public debt, a nearly catastrophic financial crisis, potentially calamitous environmental problems looming—our government could quite rightly be considered garbage. As the old saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.”

Why do we have such a bizarre way of hiring the people who run our government?

The Framers of our Constitution never intended for citizens to elect government officials the way they do today. Robert Sherman, one of Connecticut’s delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, expressed their concern well when he said, “The people immediately should have as little to do with electing the government as possible, because they lack information and are constantly liable to be misled.” As a result, they put into place a system that consisted primarily of indirect elections—citizens electing representatives who elected other representatives.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives were among the few representatives that were to be directly elected. The Constitution specifies that “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative.” This, of course, was merely guesswork as there had never been a representative democracy before then that even resembled what they had created. They didn’t know what would work, since they were operating on theory alone. What they found once elections actually occurred was that people were disconnected from government, easily misled, and made poor voting decisions. Over the following two hundred years, reformers gradually replaced indirect elections with the direct elections we are now familiar with, and the limits on the number of citizens per U.S. House Member was abolished—further disconnecting citizens from their government.

It is due to this quirk of history that we now define democracy as citizens directly electing a wide variety of distant representatives—not because it has proven to be effective. Representative democracy based on direct elections is an ideal—a fantasy.

The process businesses use to hire leaders has evolved over a long period of time and has proven successful across millions of businesses. We should consider it the gold standard to which our democracy should aspire.

Is it possible to democratically hire political leaders the way businesses leaders are hired?

The primary difference between the two methods is one of numbers. People who hire business leaders are close to the positions they hire for and can get close to job candidates—it is a fully connected environment. In a democracy, citizens are extremely distant from the various offices they hire for and are extremely distant from the candidates—it is an utterly disconnected environment. In order to bring sanity to government, citizens must be much closer to the people they elect.

Since all of the offices citizens currently elect candidates to are very distant from them, it follows that citizens should not be involved in any of these elections. They should only be involved in elections where they can have real two-way communication with the candidates and truly get to know them so they can cast informed votes. Thus, it makes sense for citizens to be involved in one election—for one office that is very close to them. All political responsibility would be delegated to the person holding that office, and he would be the personal government representative of his constituents. This would vastly simplify what is required of people and allow them to realistically participate in democracy.

Such a system would require small election districts and a single office for each of those districts across the country. We might call these small election districts communities, with community representatives being the elected officials.

In order to maintain the necessary degree of closeness, community representatives would also not participate in elections where there is a great distance. Rather, they would only elect candidates to low-level offices, as these offices are sufficiently close to allow intimate knowledge of the candidates. These lower-level representatives, once elected, would in turn elect candidates to higher-level offices, with this process continuing up to the highest level of government.

As an example, citizens would elect community representatives, who would in turn elect the state representative in their district, who would in turn elect the district’s Member of Congress, who would in turn elect the President. A similar scenario would need to be in place for electing all other officials as well. The actual structure and number of layers would vary from place to place depending on the size of the population.

This structure is, of course, a hierarchy, and is similar to the organizational hierarchy used in businesses—and most other successful organizations. It would in effect organize the population and make the people the government. It would be a true democracy—government of, by, and for the people.

It just so happens that Thomas Jefferson proposed something very similar to this, which he called a “Ward Republic.” In an 1814 letter to Joseph C. Cabell, Jefferson wrote, “There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.”

We have thought through such a system of democracy, and we call it Local Electors, which is also the name we’ve given the community representatives. You can learn more about it at www.localelectors.org.

Our first step toward bringing sanity to our government is acknowledging that our current system of elections is broken and something very different is needed. We can’t continue to do things the way we do them now, making minor tweaks and expect improvement. Fundamental change is a good and necessary thing!

In the second presidential debate, the candidates were again found to be less than truthful. PolitiFact reported that “President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney clashed at a town hall debate Tuesday with talking points that both used and abused the truth.” FactCheck.org found that it was “full of claims that sometimes didn’t match the facts.”

Fact checkers had similar comments after the vice presidential debate. The Washington Post reported that “There were lots of feisty words and fishy facts in Thursday’s debate between Vice President Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan.” PolitiFact reported that “The vice presidential debate Thursday night began on a somber note, then quickly turned to lively attacks—with both candidates stretching the truth.”

It wasn’t just in the debates that the truth was ignored. The New York Times reported that when Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan accepted their party’s nomination, “The two speeches—peppered with statements that were incorrect or incomplete—seemed to signal the arrival of a new kind of presidential campaign, one in which concerns about fact-checking have been largely set aside.” President Obama’s speech, on the other hand, was found to be mostly true by The Washington Post.

Factcheck.org analyzed the stump speeches Mitt Romney has given around the country and “found numerous instances of candidate spin in what Romney had to say.” Obama, on the other hand, was found to be “leaving out or glossing over inconvenient facts, twisting others and sometimes stating things that aren’t so.” The Washington Post selected the five television ads from each side that have had the “greatest spending on them.” Four out of five of the ads from each side were given either two or three “Pinocchios” (out of a possible four).

This is a very frightening state of affairs, for it is reasonable to assume that if our highest political leaders are so willing to distort the truth and leave out important information in their campaigns, that they will have no qualms about doing so while in office as well. Such distortions and omissions would likely be related to actions or policies by the government that are contrary to the public interest. We might find—after the fact, of course— that favored special interests were allowed to engage in activities that cause massive damage to the economy, the environment, or to public health. The government might spent gigantic amounts of money irresponsibly and put the country many trillions of dollars into debt. We could even find ourselves in an unjust or unnecessary war, with many thousands or millions of citizens being killed or injured. There is no greater threat to the freedom of the American people than politicians who are willing to lie to the public.

The typical reaction to such behavior in politics is to bash the “politicians.” In fact, such behavior is now so commonplace that the word “politician” has become a derogatory term. Candidates running for office routinely bash the “politicians” in Washington or in the state capitol in an attempt to justify their own election. Clearly, the problem with honesty is not isolated to any one politician or political office—it is endemic to our entire political system—and has been for a very long time. It seems, therefore, that the problem is with the political system that has given rise to this state of affairs.

What has allowed this to happen?

Consider some of the debate topics that fact checkers found the candidates less than honest about: details of Mitt Romney’s economic plan, various taxing and spending policies of the Obama administration, details about Obamacare, whether Mitt Romney invested in companies that shipped jobs to China, the number of jobs that have been created over the last four years.

How many Americans understand these topics well enough to spot fabrications when they hear them? Surveys have consistently found that most Americans are dismally uninformed about politics. After the 2010 elections, fewer than half of all Americans knew that the Republicans had won a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Just 28 percent could correctly name John Roberts as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Only 40 percent can name the three branches of government.

If so many people know so little about the government, it seems hard to imagine more than a tiny minority knowing the facts about the debate topics. And when people don’t know the facts, they are highly susceptible to lies and manipulation.

Do people know so little because they are stupid and lazy? Hardly. America is full of brilliant, hardworking people, and most of them simply aren’t interested in delving into such issues. Most of the things our government deals with are very complex, obscure, and boring, and most people have busy lives with many more interesting and pressing things to spend their time on. It would be irrational for people to spend a lot of time learning about things that probably won’t have a direct, immediate impact on their lives.

The truth doesn’t matter to the candidates because the people don’t know what the truth is. To a large extent, the candidates can even brush off the fact checkers because they know most people won’t read their findings. A member of the Romney campaign made this clear when he said, “We won’t let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

It is well known—particularly by the candidates—that people, by and large, decide whom to vote for based on the candidate’s personality, image, authenticity, and vibe. Campaigns are thus about showmanship. That’s why, despite reports that Mitt Romney ran roughshod over the truth, he was widely considered the winner of the first debate. The issues are the battleground on which the fight takes place, but the facts themselves don’t really matter.

In this environment, politicians spin and exaggerate issues while leaving out important details. They take credit for positive outcomes that are not of their making and blame their opponent for events over which they had no control. They attack and vilify their opponents on minor things that they blow out of proportion while trumpeting things about themselves that are overstated or only partly true. They frame issues advocated by supporting special interests as being in the best interests of the country, while they are often contrary to the public interest. They repeat fabrications over and over until people come to accept them as truth.

Any group with enough resources is also free to enter the fray and exploit the public’s lack of knowledge. Thousands of special interest groups have established front groups with public-friendly names that masquerade as public interest groups. These organizations spend billions on advertising and public relations campaigns every year in an attempt to influence the public, and much of what they propagate is a very twisted version of the truth.

How can people possibly make good voting decisions in an atmosphere such as this?

What we have is a gigantic gap between what citizens are expected to know about politics and what is possible. It is by expecting the impossible that we have gotten into this morass of misinformation.

Does this mean democracy is an impossible ideal?

Consider what we do when we have a legal, medical, or plumbing problem—we delegate the task to a lawyer, doctor, or plumber. People accept that it is impractical for them to become experts in law, medicine, and plumbing, so why do we expect everyone to understand what is going on in an enormous government and make good decisions about it? Considering the wide variety of issues the government deals with, it is at least as complex as any of these other fields, and probably far more so.

Perhaps the solution is for citizens to delegate their political responsibilities to a representative who is close enough to them that they can realistically get to know him, engage in real two-way communication with him, and hold him accountable for the work that he does do. This would require all citizens to be part of small election districts, each with their own representative—a community representative.

In this scenario, even dedicated community representatives would still be too distant and overwhelmed by our enormous government, so in order to bridge that gap, our existing representatives would also need to be arranged in a hierarchy, with each level electing, setting the agenda of, and holding accountable the next level.

An example of how this would work is as follows: Citizens would elect community representatives, who would in turn elect members of the state legislature, who would in turn elect the governor. Members of the state legislature in each congressional district would also elect their member of the U.S. Congress, who would in turn elect the president. Community representatives would also elect members of the city council, who in turn would elect the mayor.

This would connect citizens to the government via a hierarchy of connected representatives. With each level being so close to adjacent levels, communication could flow up and down the hierarchy with ease. And since representatives at each level would be accountable to people who are close to them, honesty would be required.

This is similar to how corporations and all organizations are arranged. In effect, a system such as this would make democracy work like an organization. Just as CEOs of large corporations don’t need to know all of their employees personally, or oversee what they do and how they do it, citizens would not need to know the details of what the government does in order to control it. And just as a CEO decides the strategy of a corporation and makes major corrections via a hierarchy of managers, citizens would be able to set the agenda of the government and make course corrections via a hierarchy of representatives.

Such a scenario would eliminate the expectation that citizens need to be informed about many candidates, many elected officials, and a vast government. Instead, people would have a single point-of-contact in the government to whom they could go for all of their political needs.

We have thought through such a system of democracy and call it Local Electors, which is also the name we have given to the community representatives. You can learn more about it at www.localelectors.org.

The conventional wisdom is that voting for distant politicians makes us free, but the opposite is true. We are only free to the extent that we know what our government representatives are doing, and that we can make informed decisions when electing them. If we want to be free, we must break out of our existing democratic paradigm, which prevents the people from knowing the truth and causes us to be mere pawns of influence.

Do partisan voters really find that one party always serves their interests, while the other does not? Does a candidate’s membership in a voter’s preferred party automatically mean that a candidate will work in the voter’s best interests, while a candidate from the opposing party will not? Is a partisan label more important than a candidate’s qualifications, integrity, and grasp of issues? It seems odd that, despite so many government problems and with people (candidates) and government being so complex, Americans would so consistently use something as simple as party ID to choose who will run our government. What’s going on here?

The theoretical justification for political parties is that they allow for collective accountability. Since decisions made in our democratic government require the agreement of numerous people and sometimes multiple branches of government, political parties, so the theory goes, are a way to hold a group of people collectively accountable. The assumption is that voters will maintain a running tally of each party’s competence and appeal—much like consumers do in the marketplace—then adjust their partisanship based on this and vote accordingly.

But studies by political scientists have consistently found that only rarely do voters change their preferred party over time. People come to identify with a political party at a young age and, despite wars, recessions, and scandals, tend to maintain allegiance to and vote for candidates of that party throughout their life. This is a very important finding that has profound implications for democracy in America.

Political Scientists Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler researched this situation and presented their findings in the book Partisan Hearts and Minds. What they found is that partisanship, rather than being based on objective evaluations of policies and party performance, can best be described as a social group, with the closest analogy being religious groups.

People who belong to a religion or religious denomination tend to adopt that religion early in life based on their family life and early adult socialization. Their choice tends to be made based on circumstance rather than a rigorous evaluation of various alternatives. Then, as members of that religion, they become indoctrinated into that religion’s precepts, adhere to its distinctive underlying doctrines, and maintain (to varying degrees) an adversarial relationship toward other religions. Their religious affiliation becomes part of their social identity and self-conception, and tends to remain intact over time.

Party affiliation is similarly adopted early in life based on family life and early adult socialization, although politics may be less central to a person’s thinking than religion is. Since political parties are somewhat associated with groups such as racial groups, religious groups, socio-economic class, and geographic location, being part of particular groups tends to have a strong bearing on partisan identity. Once party identification is established it tends to crystallize, becoming part of a person’s self-conception and social identity, and remains intact over time. As partisans, people become indoctrinated with their chosen party’s issue positions and ideology.

Political scientist Matthew Levendusky has studied the process of political indoctrination, which he calls sorting, and wrote The Partisan Sort to describe it. According to Levendusky, “Most voters simply do not think about politics and political issues enough to possess the well-developed abstract belief systems characteristic of [political] elites (politicians and members of the news media)… Ordinary voters cannot form coherent views on a long list of issues, but they can look to elites for guidance on what positions they should take.” In trying to make sense of political issues of the day, people “look to elites for guidance on what positions they should take, and adopt those positions.” In a sense, they ask themselves “what do people like me (members of my party) think about this issue?” This causes people’s attitudes on issues to move into alignment with their partisan affiliation. Republicans become anti-tax, pro-gun rights, and for a strong national defense, while Democrats become sympathetic to the plight of immigrants, pro-gay rights, and pro-life.

Identification with a political party also causes people to raise a perceptual screen that colors their perception of politicians and public affairs. People’s evaluations of political figures become biased as politicians of their own party tend to be judged favorably, while politicians of the opposing party are judged unfavorably. Party supporters tend to accept information that is agreeable with their partisan beliefs and resist information that challenges their beliefs. This effect is compounded when they gravitate to news sources that support their partisan point of view, which they tend to do.

These partisan beliefs come to affect not only people’s opinions, but also seemingly neutral facts. For example, in a 1988 survey a majority of respondents who described themselves as strong Democrats said that inflation had gotten worse over the eight years of the Reagan administration, when it had in fact fallen from 13.5 percent in 1980 to 4.1 percent in 1988. Conversely, in a 1996 survey, a majority of Republicans said that the federal budget deficit had increased under Bill Clinton, when in fact the deficit had shrunk from $255 billion to $22 billion. Similarly, surveys in 2004 found that beliefs about whether weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq were largely correlated with the political party respondents identified with, with Republicans tending to believe they had been found and Democrats believing they had not.

As people’s beliefs become sorted along ideological lines their emotional responses to the parties becomes stronger. They take an interest in political news, much like sports fans follow the fortunes of sports teams and players and get caught up in the competition. But since partisan attachments are closely linked with their social identity and self-conception, people supporting their party are viewed as the “good guys” while those supporting the other party are seen as the “bad guys.” The mass parties become increasingly ideologically homogenous and the country becomes divided into two warring camps, with each side consistently voting for candidates of their own party.

Partisans do at times vote for candidates of the opposing party, but this tends to be when those candidates are more familiar to them, as is often the case with incumbents or celebrity candidates. And while people’s evaluations of their political party and its candidates may change over time, people’s self-conception remains steady over time, which causes them to loyally return to support their party in the long term.

In this way, elections become less about issues than about group competition. People become engaged by the desire to see their group triumph over the opposing side, and voting allows them to participate directly in the fight. Even if someone finds a policy objective advocated by the opposing side appealing, the desire for victory over the opposition powerfully influences the probability that they will vote for candidates of their party in the election.

A surprising finding about partisanship is that the more politically informed people are the more strongly partisan they tend to be, with stronger views on political issues and greater loyalty to their party. The renowned “swing voters,” on the other hand, tend to be the least informed, have the weakest party attachments, and are least likely to vote. For this reason politicians tend to spend their time firing up their partisan base than trying to win over independents in the middle.

The implications of this is that voting according to a preferred party does almost nothing to hold politicians accountable. If politicians of a particular political party know they can consistently rely on the support of a particular set of voters, there is very little incentive to work in their interest because there are no consequences for ignoring them. Meanwhile, politicians of the other party can safely assume that those voters will never be won over, so they have little incentive to work in their interests either.

It is difficult to see how collective responsibility could work at all. When voters look to a political party and attempt to hold it accountable, they are in effect overlooking the politicians who actually do the work and relieve them of any individual accountability. How is collective accountability possible with no individual accountability?

Individual accountability would require voters to communicate directly with their representatives, set their agenda, and hold them accountable for achieving it. This is how individual accountability works in any normal work environment, and it is hard to imagine why it would be different in politics. But in our democracy, voting is a binary form of communication, so nothing is communicated in elections other than a yes or no. Since each representative has many thousands or millions of constituents, two-way communication is impossible for more than a tiny few. And since our government is enormous and enormously complex, it is impractical for the average person to keep up with politics and the actions of each of their representatives to a degree that would allow for any real individual accountability.

This is the central problem with our democratic system of government—accountability of any sort is impossible. And without accountability, government that is of, by, and for the people is merely a dream. All of the problems with our government and many in our society stem from this root problem.

Is there a solution to this problem?

Many corporations consist of millions of people, yet they are able to work efficiently and achieve amazing things. This is possible because CEOs delegate responsibility to a hierarchy of managers, with each manager reporting to their boss, and ultimately to the CEO. What results is an organization. CEOs don’t have to know everything about everything and what everyone is doing—that would be impossible. Each person in the organization is given only the amount of responsibility that he can realistically deal with. This allows one person to manage millions of others through a small number of top managers. The benefits of organizations are widely accepted throughout the world—and are challenged by no one.

In these organizations, each person also reports to a single boss. This creates a clear chain of communication and accountability up and down the hierarchy. Similarly, businesses with regular customers generally assign one person to be the single point of contact for customers in order to avoid confusion and create accountability.

This model could easily be applied to representative democracy.

Rather than having to understand the job responsibilities of many representatives, learn about many candidates, and stay informed about the actions of many representatives, citizens should have only one government representative—a single point of contact with the government. This would require small election districts for those representatives. Citizens would in effect be organized into communities, which would form the foundation that government is built upon. This would vastly simplify what is required of citizens, and it would compel people to participate by empowering them and bringing them together with their neighbors, who would become friends.

Representatives would need to be arranged into a hierarchy, with lower level representatives electing, setting the agenda of, and holding accountable higher level representatives. For instance, community representatives would elect the city council, who would elect the mayor. Community representatives would also elect state representatives, who would elect members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who would in turn elect the President. Citizens would be connected to all levels of government by a chain of connected representatives.

In this scenario, citizens would gain political power by giving up what are now many powerless votes and trading them for a single elected representative that they can realistically work with. This would allow the people to manage the government via a hierarchy of representatives. Government would no longer be the distant, uncontrollable, unaccountable monstrosity that it is today.

We have thought through such a system of democracy and we call it Local Electors, which is also the name we’ve given to the community representatives. You can learn more about it at www.localelectors.org.

The problem is not members of the other political party, or political parties themselves. The problem is a system of government that makes accountability impossible. It is hard to imagine how an unaccountable government could not cause more problems for the American people. As long as citizens are unable to control the government, special interests will step in and get government to work in their interest, which is typically contrary to the public interest.

What problems and injustices in our society bother you? Multi-trillion dollar preemptive wars, devastating financial crises, widespread environmental destruction, out of control health care costs, the lack of immigration reform? Whatever it is, the only way those problems can be addressed is by a government that is truly accountable to the people. We believe a system of Local Electors would do just that and if you learn more about it we think you will agree.

Don’t wait for someone else to decide your future. Real democracy comes with real responsibility, and only by taking personal responsibility can you ever realistically expect real change—that’s what democracy is all about. Please share this article with your friends so we can move down the path to real political accountability.

Protesting is what people do when their government is not responding to their needs or is in some way oppressing them. When people demonstrate, they are in effect saying, “You are not listening to us, so we will make a scene in the streets until you do.”

It is understandable why the Egyptians protested in Tahrir Square and why Arabs in other countries in the region protested—they were suffering under the rule of autocratic regimes and had no say in their government. They protested because they wanted democracy and the freedom that comes with it.

But the United States is a democracy. Why did Americans find it necessary to protest? The First Amendment of our Constitution gives people the right to peaceably assemble, but as a democracy shouldn’t people be able to control the government without resorting to such tactics? Shouldn’t the people be able to utilize the mechanisms of democracy to compel the government to act according to their will?

The slogan of the Occupy demonstrators was “We are the 99%,” implying that our government is being controlled by 1% of the population, with the remaining 99% having little or no control. If this were the case, our government would have to be considered little different from the autocratic regimes of the Arab world. Could this be the case?

Consider the following:

Our government has multiple levels and multiple branches at each level, making it extremely complex. In elections, each citizen is responsible for voting for a wide range of candidates for various offices in primary and general elections, and in some states on initiatives, referendums, and constitutional amendments as well. Surveys have consistently shown that most people are frightfully uninformed about politics, with many able to name only a few of their representatives, and most knowing next to nothing about what any of their representatives have done while in office. Is it realistic to expect average people to stay adequately informed and to make good voting decisions on all of these things? Is it only the act of voting that matters, with good decisions not mattering at all?

Voting is a binary form of communication, and while voting is a terrific way for a group of people to make a decision on a specific issue or to elect a candidate, a vote cannot communicate anything beyond a “yes” or “no.” Since our representatives each work on dozens of issues while in office, isn’t it ongoing communication and accountability that is important rather than simply casting votes for candidates every few years?

Each of our representatives has many thousands or millions of constituents, which makes it impossible for more than a tiny few to communicate with them directly. How is representation possible when communication is impossible?

We talk of “we the people” and of the “public interest,” but the general public is completely unorganized politically, which makes it impossible for any “will of the people” to emerge. How can our representatives work in the public interest when there is no way of knowing what the public interest is?

As one of many millions, each citizen tends to feel overwhelmed and powerless to affect an enormous, distant government. We experience a diffusion of responsibility and assume that someone else will take responsibility for being informed, making good voting decisions, and holding representatives accountable—so no one does. How can Americans control the government when no one feels responsible for it?

In this environment voters are uninformed, unorganized, disconnected, and apathetic, which makes it very difficult for candidates for political office to turn them into supporters who vote for them.

Special interests, on the other hand, have a strong interest in specific government policies that benefits them. The reason they get involved in politics is because their agendas are likely opposed by the majority of citizens. Those who are successful are well organized, well financed, highly motivated, and they are happy to provide support in the form of money and/or votes from their membership to candidates who will advocate for their cause in government.

The cost for candidates to appeal to the general voting population is very high, while the cost for appealing to special interests groups is very low. The easiest and surest way for candidates to get elected therefore, is to appeal to special interests. Candidates “tend to see their constituents not as individuals, but as groups,” wrote political scientist Benjamin Bishin in his book Tyranny of the Minority. Campaigning consists largely of “building electoral coalitions of [special interest] groups who care intensely about an issue and who will support the candidate in elections in exchange for advocating their agenda in government.” Once elected, these special interest groups are very good at holding politicians accountable, while the general public is not.

The people involved in these special interest groups consist of far more than 1% of the population. Any group that is intensely interested in an issue, has sufficient resources, and is well organized has a good chance of getting their agenda enacted as government policy. Today, this includes banks, insurance companies, defense contractors, gun owners, anti-abortion advocates, unions, and many, many others, plus a few super-rich individuals. The total number of people who are a supporter of one or more special interest group may amount to the entire U.S. population, but in nearly every case, each group represents a minority, and often a very tiny minority of the population, on their specific issue.

While we do have democratic rituals and ceremonies, “we the people” as a majority have no real say in our government because of the way our “democracy” is structured. Our “democratic” system of government is nearly perfectly designed to thwart the “will of the people” and to cater to special interest groups. We don’t suffer from the tyranny of an autocratic dictator, but we do suffer from the tyranny of many thousands of special interest groups.

Since the most fundamental premise of democracy is that government must be “by the people,” it is difficult to imagine how government “by special interest groups” could be considered a democracy. And since freedom stems from laws written by the people (or those who truly represent them), it is difficult to imagine how we can be considered free. Thus it is completely understandable why the Occupy protestors would demonstrate when they did, and we should expect many more similar protests for as long as our system of government remains as it is.

The Framers of our Constitution feared allowing the public to directly elect the government. They knew that most people would be uninformed, easily influenced, and liable to make voting decisions that are against their own best interest. They tried to avoid exactly what we are doing now by putting protections in our Constitution, including limiting the voting franchise and indirect elections. Unfortunately, these protections were gradually eroded with well-intentioned reforms, but the problem of an uninformed, disconnected electorate was never taken into account.

Is there a way to solve this problem? Is democracy that is truly of, by, and for the people possible?

All of the problems above point to a single root problem—the enormous numerical distance between citizens and their representatives. It is impossible for people to stay sufficiently informed and to make good voting decisions because government is so enormous, complex, and distant from them. Two-way communication between citizens and their representatives is impossible for more than a tiny few because there are so many citizens per representative. Citizens don’t feel personally responsible for the government because they are lost in a vast sea of voters. There is an enormous gap between citizens and representatives that must be filled in order for democracy to work.

Fortunately, this is a problem for which there is a well-established solution.

Many corporations are very large, with some consisting of millions of people. Yet a single person—a CEO—is able to manage everyone in the corporation because it is an organization. The CEO breaks responsibilities into manageable chunks and distributes them to a hierarchy of managers. Everyone in the organization is accountable to a boss, and ultimately to the CEO. This connects the CEO to the millions of employees via a hierarchy of managers and makes it possible for him to manage the entire corporation and achieve business goals.

In addition, employees in corporations always report to a single boss. This creates a clear line of communication and responsibility that makes accountability possible. Similarly, businesses that have ongoing relationships with customers generally assign one person to be the single point of contact for the customer for the same reasons.

It makes sense that, in order for democracy to work, representation must be broken down into chunks that people can realistically work within, the public must be organized, and citizens must have a single representative who serves as their single point of contact in the government.

How might this work?

Citizens would need to be arranged in small election districts, which we will call communities. Members of each community would elect someone from within their community to serve as their community representative, and delegate all political responsibility to that person. This would make it possible for everyone in the community to get to know their representative, tell him their needs and concerns, and hold him accountable.

Representatives would need to be arranged into a hierarchy, with lower level representatives electing, setting the agenda of, and holding accountable higher level representatives. Communication could flow up and down the hierarchy with ease, just as it does in a business. It would be an inverted hierarchy that would connect citizens to all levels of government.

This would organize the public so that the “will of the people” could be known by the government. It would vastly simplify what citizens have to deal with and allow the people to effectively manage the government. People would feel motivated to become engaged in democracy because they would be empowered to really make a difference and they would be part of a community of neighbors with whom they would become friends.

We have though through such a system of democracy, and we call it Local Electors, which is also the name we’ve given the community representatives. You can learn more about it at www.localelectors.org.

How do you feel about the power of our financial industry and the damage it has done to our economy? Are you concerned about the environmental destruction that has become so common across our country? Does it bother you that so many people have no health insurance, and that many who do still find themselves with large medical bills? Are you upset that we somehow continuously find ourselves in one preemptive war after another?

All of these problems are symptoms of the disconnect that exists between citizens and our government. Patching over our problems with reforms like campaign finance reform simply won’t fix our problems. We must have the courage to accept that fundamental change is needed to fix these problems and the myriad of others that now plague us.

The first step toward real change is understanding—the American people must understand what the root problem with our government is as well as  possible solutions such as Local Electors. With your help, this can be achieved. Please open your own mind to real change and email this article to three friends.

When the Framers of our Constitution designed our system of representative democracy in the late 1780s, it was an experiment. There was no other country with a government like it, and there never had been. They designed it on the model of a 4^th century B.C. Greek city-state, an 18^th century English parliament elected by less than five percent of the population over age 20, and the work of philosophers, both contemporary and ancient.

There is no mention of political parties in our Constitution, yet the Framers wrote about them elsewhere, often referring to them as “factions.” In 1780, John Adams wrote, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This in my opinion is to be dreaded as the greatest evil under our Constitution.” In the Federalist Papers, James Madison sought to convince readers that one of the main advantages of the Constitution, with its separation of powers, was “its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.” In a letter to a friend in 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” And in his Farewell Address, George Washington warned that political parties would be “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” The Framers considered factions “engines of corruption” that put the interests of selfish minorities ahead of the common good. Yet once the Constitution was ratified, political parties formed almost immediately.

Why did this happen?

The vast majority of people are by nature not inherently interested in what goes on in a government that is distant from their daily life. This is understandable, since they have busy lives with plenty of more interesting and pressing things to be concerned with. Most of what government deals with is boring and has little immediate impact on them. People are apathetic because, in a country of 312 million (4 million in 1790), each individual tends to feel disconnected, with little or no ability to affect what happens in government. The public is also by nature disorganized—too disorganized for any “will of the people” to spontaneously emerge. In order for a government that requires public participation to exist in this environment, something must bridge this gap and link the people with the government—something not specified in the Constitution.

When the Constitution was first enacted, those politicians who won national elections naturally had different ideas about what government should do and how to go about doing it. They were each backed by different organized (special interest) groups, each of which represented but a small minority of the population: urban bankers and businessmen from the northeast, yeoman farmers and slaveholders from the south, advocates of states’ rights, advocates of a strong national government, support for Britain, support for revolutionary France, etc. As a result, two competing coalitions of groups, or “political parties”—the Federalists and Republicans—formed to represent these different and often competing interests and sets of ideas. Over time, the parties built extensive organizations around the country in order to get out the vote in support of candidates who agreed with them.

Political parties emerged and have continued to exist because the people were and still are generally uninformed, apathetic, disorganized, and disconnected, and because parties bridge the gap between the people and the government. Political parties are successful because they serve the needs of three groups—special interest groups, ambitious politicians, and voters.

With organization, resources, and continuity over the long term, it is only natural that special interests would take the lead. Special interests contribute resources to parties and member politicians who will enact policies they care about so that they can influence voters to vote for them. Those who oppose these policies contribute to the opposing party and its member politicians. As described by political scientists Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller in their book The Party Decides, “from the framing of the Constitution to the present, parties may be fruitfully understood as organized attempts by [coalitions of] intense policy demanders to get control of government.”

Politicians in this environment must be considered ambitious because they must be self-promoting, motivated enough to endure a long and arduous campaign, and willing to cooperate with special interest groups whom they may not agree with. Parties serve the needs of ambitious politicians, who are often unknown to the public, as an ongoing organization which voters are familiar with and that politicians can associate themselves with, so they can achieve their own political goals and maintain a long career in politics.

For voters, parties serve as a tool—a heuristic—to help them make sense of a political world that they are disconnected from and mostly uninformed about. Parties aid voters in making voting decisions about candidates whom they know little or nothing about.

Political parties are vehicles of promotion—marketing tools, brand names, teams complete with colors and mascots—that special interests and politicians encourage the public to rally around. They promote ideologies that are carefully framed to justify their actions and to influence (manipulate) members of the public to support them.

The issues that parties publicly represent are issues about which there is disagreement among groups within the public, and that candidates can promise to advocate for when in government. Their strategy is based on dividing the public into competing groups and then hyping the issues and fanning the flames of passion of supporters in an effort to motivate people to vote for them. If the public is in agreement on an issue, candidates can’t use it as a reason for people to vote for them, so there is no motivation or payoff for pursuing these issues. Once in office, elected officials propose and oppose policies advocated by their supporting groups, serving primarily the interests of those who helped them get elected rather than solving the problems that the general public cares about.

Most fundamentally, parties organize and orient the public by focusing people on issues and motivating them to vote. They provide structure to what would otherwise be a disorganized and chaotic process. For this reason, many people reason that there can be no democracy without political parties. It just so happens that parties work in a way that maximizes the power of special interests and ambitious politicians and minimizes the power of citizens. This makes sense, since political parties were created by special interests and ambitious politicians to serve their own needs rather than the needs of the public.

The effect of political parties is that they undermine the central premise of democracy, which is that the people will rule—the people are sovereign and government must work to serve the interest of the people. Coalitions of minority groups with a “special interest” are not the same as the public interest. These minority groups typically have an agenda that is contrary to the public interest, which is why they must resort to such tactics. Political parties divide the public into warring groups, turning the people against one another and making it impossible for the people to rule. The effect is a classic divide-and-conquer situation that distracts the people from any sense of a common good, or public interest.

We should view political parties as a symptom of an underlying problem—a disorganized, apathetic, uninformed, and disconnected public—and as a “solution” that conflicts with the core value of democracy—that the people shall govern themselves. Government by political parties is government by minority groups, which is contrary to the intentions of the Framers of our Constitution and contrary to the central premise of democracy.

It is important to recognize this so that we can place blame where it is due. The problem is not people who favor the other party—studies have shown that most people tend to agree on most issues, with only slight variations. The billions of dollars spent on political campaigns are used to exploit what few, minor differences we have and to create new differences we would not otherwise have had. We have far more in common than we have differences.

The problem is a political system that unrealistically expects each citizen to be interested in and informed about a government that is too distant and too complex for them to comprehend. This unrealistic expectation effectively leaves average people powerless. There is nothing in human nature that should lead us to believe people can do such a thing. Indeed, one of the most firmly established findings in political science is that citizens are dismally uninformed about politics.

In order to do away with the parties and have a government that is of, by, and for the people, democracy must be designed in such a way that allows people to realistically engage in it.

Is this possible?

Consider this:

Walmart has about 9,000 locations, sells more than a million products, and has 2.2 million employees—it is an enormously complex organization. CEO Mike Duke doesn’t try to manage the entire company alone—that would be impractical. Rather, he has a hierarchy of managers who report to him. Everyone in the organization is accountable to his boss, and ultimately to Mr. Duke. Mr. Duke is able to manage the company and successfully achieve business goals because management responsibility is broken down into chunks that people can realistically deal with. He is connected to every employee via a hierarchy of connected managers.

This is in stark contrast to our democracy, where each citizen is expected to stay informed about an enormously complex government, hire a wide range of government representatives, and somehow compel them to act in their interest on a wide array of issues. It is an impossible expectation. It makes sense that in order for the people to control the government, democracy must work like an organization.

How might this work?

Businesses understand the importance of having a single point of contact for customers who deal with them on a regular basis. Citizens should likewise have a single government representative who they can deal with on all government issues. This would allow citizens to get to know their representative personally, convey their needs and concerns directly, and hold that representative accountable for addressing those needs and concerns. This would require all citizens to be part of a small election district, which we might call a community. Each community would elect a community representative to whom all political responsibility would be delegated.

Citizens would participate in democracy by participating in their community. Politics would not be so much about the actions of a distant government as about things people actually cared about. If someone had an issue he was concerned about, he would discuss it with other community members and, if they supported his issue, it could be presented to the community as a whole. If the community supported it, the community representative would be responsible for advocating for it at the next level.

So that these community representatives would also be connected and able to communicate directly with higher-level representatives, they would likewise be part of a relatively small group. Representatives would be arranged in a hierarchy with each level electing, setting the agenda of, and holding accountable the next higher-level representatives. This is the arrangement that allows CEOs to manage businesses, and it would likewise allow citizens to manage the government. Communication could flow up and down the hierarchy with ease. Issues that are supported at each level would rise to the top and become policy, while those that are not would stall.

Such a system would reduce the complexity people are faced with and allow them to manage the government. It would empower people and make them realize that they have the ability to create real change themselves. The people would be the government. Community-based government would bring people together and engage them in a process that is not politics as we know it—but life. Democracy would be a wholly natural act of people meeting with their neighbors, working out their differences, working towards common goals, and engaging in their community. There would be no need for political parties, so they would disappear.

We call this system of democracy Local Electors, which is also the name we’ve given to the community representatives. You can learn more about it at www.localelectors.org.

America is experiencing a trend of more and more special interests gaining increasing amounts of power in government. Citizens are becoming increasingly disconnected and government is becoming less and less of, by, and for the people. Where is this trend leading us?

The never-ending partisan bickering we hear is noise that distracts us from the real problem—a public that can’t realistically participate in democracy. Only by focusing on this root problem can we truly address the problems that face us. We believe this is a good solution.

We hope you will join us.

According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, $3.8 billion was raised around state elections during the 2009–2010 elections. If the current trend of ever increasing amounts continues, this election cycle could easily top $4.0 billion.

Unfortunately, there is no entity that compiles local level election campaign spending across the country, and very few do within any state. It has been estimated that $350 million was spent campaigning for local elections in 1992. Considering the growth trend in state and national campaign spending, it is likely that local level election campaign spending this election cycle will cost at least $1 billion, and possibly considerably more.

In total, this election cycle is likely to cost around $11 billion. That is a mind boggling amount of money. To help put it into perspective, that is about $78 per registered voter in the United States.

Isn’t it odd that so much money is “needed” to conduct “democratic” elections? What do these figures represent?

The justification for campaign contributions is of course that it is expensive to run a campaign. Candidates need to communicate with voters, and that communication is expensive.

Surveys have shown that barely a third of all citizens can recall the name of their representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, about one-half know that there are 2 U.S. Senators from their state, and only 66 percent of the population can name their state’s governor. Nearly all citizens have extremely low levels of knowledge about what their various representatives have actually done while in office.

Since each of our representatives have many thousands or millions of constituents, and those constituents are generally uninformed and disconnected from government, candidates need an enormous amount of money to reach them. There is an enormous demand for campaign contributions because there is an enormous disconnect.

These amounts of political contributions could be an expression of that demand, and of the degree to which the American people are disconnected from their government and the electoral process. But considering that most people remain largely uninformed at election time despite this enormous expenditure of money, these amounts are likely a gross underrepresentation of the degree of disconnect. We should therefore expect the volume of campaign contributions to continue to climb well into the future.

What are the consequences of all of this money on our politics?

The higher level an office is, the larger the constituency, and therefore the greater the need for money. For these offices, the first requirement is not what kind of ideas someone has, but how much money they have or can they raise—and whether they are willing to do what it takes to raise it. The first step in the election process is the “money primary”—a contest of raising money. Due to fears of corruption, limits on the size of contributions are relatively low, which forces candidates to spend an enormous amount of time begging for money from a wide variety of sources. Candidates must spend time on the phone dialing for dollars and traveling widely to attend fund-raisers.

In 2012, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will likely raise over $1 billion each. Both have spent considerable amounts of time over the past few years flying around the country holding fundraisers. At each stop they spend most of their time in exclusive gatherings with a few people who have large disposable incomes and an interest in politics, and often in specific policies that would benefit them. In 2010, the average winner of a U.S. House seat spent $1.4 million and the average winner of a Senate seat spent $9.8 million. Inevitably, the process of raising money gives politicians a skewed perception of the needs of the country.

Raising money takes so much time and effort that, once elected, representatives must immediately start thinking about the next election. “The day after an election,” Robert Kaiser wrote in So Damn Much Money, “[Members of Congress] have to start raising money. A Member facing a competitive campaign routinely devotes 8–10 hours a week dialing for dollars.”

This creates a situation political scientists call “the permanent campaign,” which is aptly described in the book The Permanent Campaign and It’s Future. “Members of the House, facing reelection every 2 years, are essentially campaigning and raising money all the time, one election bid merging into the next, with little or no respite between,” wrote contributing author Anthony Corrado. “Most [Senate] incumbents now raise money throughout the course of their six-year terms” as well.

In Larry Markenson’s book Speaking Freely, Former Congressman Joe Scarborough described how, once elected, House Members are engaged in a second campaign. Members who raise the most money and give it to other members, leaderships PACs, and to the party committees gain the most power in Congress and become leaders. Political power is “fueled by money.” Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann wrote in The Permanent Campaign and It’s Future that “legislators capable of amassing cash and directing it to others are those who are likely to build up political currency that can be translated into votes for leadership positions or other legislative benefits.”

This has led to a situation that Ornstein and Mann called “governing to campaign,” where the process of campaigning and the process of governing have “lost their distinctiveness,” with campaigning “in many ways the dominant partner of the two.” Campaigning has trumped governing.

Much of the activity in Congress is geared towards shaking the “money tree” to bring in campaign contributions from affected industries. “The lawmakers themselves, in the zeal to raise ever-increasing bundles of campaign cash, regularly shake down lobbyists for money using ever more brazen threats to demand that the lobbyists contribute personal and PAC funds and to their fund-raisers,” wrote Mann and Ornstein in The Broken Branch. Politicians who refuse to play these games are disadvantaged in elections and are vulnerable to defeat. Jesse Unruh, former Speaker of the House of California, put it nicely when he said: “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

Money is “like a cancer eating away at our democratic process,” wrote Wright Andrews, partner in the lobbying firm of Butera & Andrews and former 2-term president of the National League of Lobbyists, in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. And Senator Richard Bryan was quoted as saying that “the role of money in politics today is so great that I think it’s the most destructive force in American politics.”

There is, of course, another kind of demand that plays a role in our government. Since government regulates industries and awards contracts, many businesses have a strong interest in the actions of government—billions and billions of dollars are at stake. If business leaders believe they can realize a higher return on investment by spending money on political activities than on investing in new plants or research, they will do so. Likewise, labor unions, trade associations, and a wide variety of other special interests groups have also proven to be very interested in influencing government policy and participate actively.

This has effectively turned government into a profit center. In 2011, there were 12,600 lobbyists in Washington and more than $3.27 billion was spent lobbying the federal government (down from 14,900 lobbyists and $3.51 billion in 2007). There are also tens of thousands of lobbyists in state capitals and around local governments throughout the country. Clearly, many have found that there is an outstanding ROI on government influence.

Lobbying itself has become a growth industry. Not only do lobbyists work to obtain government benefits for their clients, they also imagine new benefits that might be had from the government and then find clients who will pay for them. Robert Kaiser’s So Damn Much Money provides an excellent description of how this has evolved.

Special interests have realized that to be most effective they must lobby not only the government, but influence public opinion as well. They need to frame the debate, control the conversation, and put public pressure on elected officials. An enormous industry has grown up to support these efforts that includes public relations firms, political advertising firms, think tanks, grassroots lobbying firms, and firms that specialize in Astroturf lobbying (fake grassroots). These organizations are experts at framing issues so that they appear to be in the public interest—whether they actually are or not—and shaping public opinion to suit their needs. Any major issue will have a major coordinated effort to create the maximum possible effect at influencing the public. Members of the public, uninformed and disconnected as they are, can’t help but be influenced. The amount of political propaganda Americans are subjected to has reached truly frightening proportions.

The reforms that have been proposed to address these problems are all very familiar: campaign finance reform, term limits, and public financing of elections. Would these reforms work? Would any of them address the root problem of a disconnected public?

Money plays a very important role in our system of government—it helps bridge the disconnect. It is inconceivable that we could fix our money-in-politics problem without addressing the disconnect. It is the need for campaign contributions—the demand that’s the problem. Money is merely a symptom of the root problem of disconnect—one of many symptoms. Nearly all of the problems with our government can be traced back to the disconnect between citizens and the government. How can we even call our system of government a “democracy” when citizens are so disconnected?

Our “democracy” has been diverging from the vision of the Framers of our Constitution for a very long time. They knew there were serious problems with allowing the public to directly elect the government, and they went to great lengths to avoid exactly what we are doing now. Over the past 225 years there have been many well-intentioned reforms that have led to where we are now, but nobody planned for it to be this way.

Is there a way to address this disconnect?

Our government is enormously large, with multiple levels and multiple branches at each level. Each citizen is responsible for electing multiple candidates to a wide variety of positions, and each of those elected officials work on scores of issues while in government. It is, for all intents and purposes, an infinitely complex system.

The first step in solving this problem is to accept that it is impossible for the average citizen to stay informed well enough to make good voting decisions. No matter how much someone follows the news, our government is simply too complex for people to keep up with it. And dividing that complexity by two—into two political parties—and simply voting according to party is a totally inadequate solution.

Is there anything in our current environment that we could use as a model on which to base a solution?

Corporations sometimes consist of millions of people, yet they are able to achieve amazing things because they are organizations. CEOs don’t try to manage each of their employees directly—that would be impractical. Rather, they break responsibilities up into manageable chunks and delegate them managers. The managers are arranged in a hierarchy, forming an organization. Everyone in the organization is accountable to his boss, and ultimately to the CEO. This makes it possible for CEOs to manage millions of people and successfully achieve business goals.

Could democracy be similarly organized?

Here is a model we have developed for how it might work:

All citizens would need to be part of a small election district, which we will call a community. Members of each community would elect someone to represent them full-time, and delegate all political responsibility to that person. This would allow people to maintain two-way communication with their representative throughout his term in office, tell him what they need from government, and hold him accountable for addressing those needs.

All government representatives would need to be arranged in a hierarchy, with lower level representatives electing, setting the agenda of, and holding accountable higher level representatives. Representatives at each level would likewise need to be part of a group that is small enough to ensure that two-way communication between levels is possible, so that accountability at all levels of government is possible. People would be connected to the government via a hierarchy of connected representatives. It would be an inverted hierarchy.

People would participate in democracy primarily by participating in their community. If someone had an issue he was concerned about, he would discuss it with other community members and, if they supported his issue, it could be presented to the community as a whole. If the community supported it, the community representative would be responsible for advocating for it at the next level. Those issues that are supported would rise through each level to the top and become policy, while those that are not would stall.

Such a system would allow the people to manage their government. It would empower people and make them realize that they have the ability to create real change themselves. The people would be the government. This would bring people together and engage them in a process that is not politics as we know it—but life. Democracy would be a wholly natural act of people meeting with their neighbors, working out their differences, working towards common goals, and engaging in their community.

We call this system of democracy Local Electors, which is also the name we’ve given to the community representatives. You can learn more about it at www.localelectors.org. Thomas Jefferson advocated for a similar system of democracy. He described communities in much the same way, but called them “wards.”

Is such a change possible?

We could hope that our current political leaders would pursue such change, but they are the product of a broken political system. They, and the special interests who back them, have an interest in maintaining the status-quo. The only way change can happen is for the American people to get behind a specific idea and to demand it relentlessly. A different set of political leaders would likely need to be elected.

Ultimately real change starts with you. The freedom that real democracy provides comes with responsibility, and none of us can expect to be truly free until each of us take responsibility for making change happen—and that means you. Please visit our website to find out what you can do.

Could the traits common among James Eagan Holmes and the others who have committed such acts tell us why they are doing such terrible things? Consider the terms people who knew Holmes used to describe him when they were interviewed: “shy,” “awkward,” “loner,” “solitary figure,” “always alone,” and “he was quiet.” These terms describe not only describe him, but also what he was missing—social connections. Other mass killers are typically described similarly.

Shortly after learning about this sad incident, I went for a walk in a park near my home on the edge of downtown Seattle. The park is on a beautiful strip of land along the Puget Sound with magnificent views of the Olympic Mountains. As is common on sunny days, there were many people walking, running, biking, and just sitting along the shore enjoying the view. I was struck, as I often am, by the number of people who were there alone. There were certainly couples and a few small groups there, but about half of the people I saw were solo—both men and women.

Seeing solitary people is not unusual in our society—in fact it is quite common. Many people commute to work alone, they most likely have few or no good friends at work, and many people go home to a place where they live alone. We may be members of organizations where we have friends, but we probably see those people on an infrequent basis and these tend to be relatively short-term relationships. When we become dissatisfied with our situation we change jobs, find a different organization to join, or pick up and move altogether. It can be a very lonesome existence.

Being married certainly provides much needed social contact, but as Three Dog Night told us “Two can be as bad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one.” Depending too much on your partner can put stress on the relationship. And although children and contacts they bring can also provide much satisfying social contact, we inevitably need more.

Harvard Professor Robert Putnam wrote a book about this phenomenon called Bowling Alone. It describes how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another, and how social structures of all types have disintegrated. It is a stunning account of how we have become a society of loners.

Since we live in this environment and we see others around us leading similar lives, we accept it as normal. But it is not. It is extremely abnormal. Since the beginning of human history and up until very recently, our ancestors all lived in communities. For them, community was their life, and life without a community was unimaginable. Our ancestors had none of the modern luxuries that we do, but you can bet they weren’t unhappy without them. They had each other and that’s what made life grand.

It is interesting to note something Oxford University anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has said: “We have our big brains to enable us to cope with the complexities of our social world.” We are first and foremost social beings. It should be no surprise, then, that when we are deprived of social life, our brains can malfunction.

Symptoms of malfunction are all around us. Alcohol consumption is surely the most common way Americans cope with loneliness. We also consume copious amounts of antidepressants. According to IMS Health data, in 2010 Americans spent $11.6 billion on antidepressants. Watching television, overeating, and shopping are also coping mechanisms. Many people find themselves perpetually searching for something they are missing as they try out different activities and different groups and move from place to place, with depression haunting them throughout their lives.

Without adequate social connections people don’t learn to respect, understand, and appreciate others. They can come to feel isolated, that life is cheap, and that they have nothing to lose. If a young man experiences feelings of hopelessness and becomes angry, he can become like a bomb, ready to go off.

It has been said that “it takes a village to raise a child.” But adults need a village just as surely as children do. An enormous number of problems in our society can be traced back to a lack of community.

What can be done about this? Is it possible for communities to exist in a society as disconnected as ours?

We must be clear about what a community is and what it is not. Internet communities and communities that are based on activities or interests are not real communities—they are merely groups. A community must be geographically based, so that easy, frequent, personal interactions are possible. This means a community must consist of a group of neighbors. Our neighbors are right outside our door; therefore they should be our most readily available source of social interaction. This is how it is in much of the rest of the world and how it has been throughout history. People often live in the same place for generations and get to know each other well, so they naturally form a close community.

But most Americans don’t even know their neighbors—at least those more than a couple of doors down. What could compel us to get together with our neighbors and form a community?

We share a common interest in what happens in our neighborhood. We all want a clean, safe, quiet neighborhood where we can live in peace and comfort. We have a shared interest in having good schools, good transportation infrastructure, nice parks, clean air and water, regular garbage pick-up etc. These shared interests can be extended from the community level to the local, state, and national level. It is a political interest that we have in common.

The small communities our ancestors lived in were of course self-governing, and their methods of self-government surely resembled democracy in many ways. In fact, community based government is likely the most natural form of government imaginable. The problems we have with our current government are due to it being on a scale that we cannot realistically function in.

I believe the problems with our current government are due to the disconnect created by the enormous ratios of citizens to representatives. When our representatives have many thousands or millions of constituents, two-way communication is impossible, meaning representation and accountability are impossible, which makes bad government inevitable. I believe that in order to have good government, representation must be broken down into tiers, much like a hierarchy of managers in a business. It must be made human scale.

These two problems form a nice junction for satisfying our human cravings for social interaction on the one hand and maintaining a good government on the other.

In this alternative democratic scenario, every citizen would be part of a community, and rather than citizens voting for office holders directly, they would elect a community representative who would be delegated all political responsibility. People would participate in politics primarily by participating in their community. They would discuss issues that concern them with other community members, and if others supported an issue it would be presented to the community. If the community supported it, it would be the responsibility of the community representative to advocate for it at the next level. Representatives would be arranged in a hierarchy with lower level representatives electing, setting the agenda of, and holding accountable higher level representatives. Those issues that are supported would rise to the top of the hierarchy and become law, while those that are not would stall. This would allow the people to manage the government.

By working together regularly in this way, people would get to know their neighbors and become friends. Communities would likely (and could be encouraged to) engage in a variety of activities to make community life enjoyable and help people bond. Everyone in the community would have an interest in including everyone else so that everyone would be good neighbors and work towards the community’s common good. Communities would come to form a social safety net and people would look after one another more and depend on a patriarchal government less. People would thus become better socialized and safely integrated into society.

I have developed a framework for what this form of democracy might look like, and I call it Local Electors, which is the name I’ve given to the community representatives. You can learn more about it and why it makes sense at www.localelectors.org. I believe this system would fix all of the problems in our government and many in our society because it is entirely based on human scale.

The massacre in Colorado was a horrible tragedy. But just as aches and pains in our body alert us that we need to change or fix something in order to prevent a physical break down, this tragedy should alert us to the problems in our society and the need to make changes. And just as only we personally can be responsible for our own bodies, in a democracy each of us must take responsibility for our government and our society. Our current government is broken because each of us is disconnected from it. Things will change only if we take personal responsibility for making change happen.

What size would election districts need to be in order to operate as a group?

Robin Dunbar is a University of Oxford anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist who studied the group size of a variety of different primate species. In 1993 he published his findings in the article Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans. What he found was that each primate species had a limit to the number of individuals that a group could consist of, and if the number of individuals in a group exceeded that number, the group would split into two daughter groups. He then correlated those group sizes to the brain sizes of each species to produce a mathematical formula for how the two correspond. Using this formula he predicted that 147.8 (rounded to 150) is the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom a person can maintain social relationships, which thereby places a limit on human group size. This number has become known as Dunbar’s number. Others have proposed that this number lies at various points between 100 and 230.

Dunbar then set about to test this prediction. Since primitive hunter-gatherer societies exist in the state that humans evolved in, their group size, he reasoned, should be the best test cases. When he analyzed what is known about historical and contemporary hunter-gatherer societies from around the globe, he found that these societies generally ranged from between 100 and 200 people, with an average size of 148.4.

His research revealed that, when groups exceed this number, the stability of the group can no longer be maintained with informal means such as a sense of mutual obligation, reciprocity, and peer pressure. As groups become larger, the sense of equality is lost and a feeling of “us” and “them” develops. Group members begin to behave very differently as they become divided and alienated from one another and the group loses the ability to agree and to act with one voice. At this point the group becomes unstable and approaches social disintegration and collapse, which causes the group to split into two daughter groups.

If groups do become larger than 150, he found that the only way stability could be maintained is by creating a hierarchy with formal structures and specific roles for various group members. And since informal means of controlling the behavior of group members becomes ineffective, formal means such as a police force become necessary.

Dunbar also found evidence of the 150 limit in militaries, both ancient and modern. In the Roman Army, the basic unit was first the maniple, which consisted of 120 to 130 men, and later the century, which consisted of 100 men. In modern armies the basic unit is the company, which consists of from 100 to 200 men. Larger groups within armies are constructed of these smaller groups. He suggests that the “upper limit is set by the number of individuals who can work effectively together as a coordinated team.” Military planners throughout history have presumably arrived at this figure through trial and error.

Dunbar found further evidence of the importance of 150 in business organizations. In his book How Many Friends Does One person Need? he wrote “A rule of thumb commonly used in business organization theory is that organizations of fewer than 150 people work fine on a person-to-person basis, but once they grow larger than this they need a formal hierarchy if they are to work efficiently. Sociologists have known since the 1950s that there is a critical threshold in the region of 150 to 200, with larger companies suffering a disproportionate amount of absenteeism and sickness.” In Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans, Dunbar wrote “an informal rule in business organization identifies 150 as the critical limit for the effective coordination of tasks and information-flow…Companies larger than this cannot function effectively without sub-structuring to define channels of communication and responsibility.” Researchers Frederic Terrien and Donald Mills found that “the larger the organization, the greater the number of control officials that is needed to ensure its smooth functioning.”

W. L. Gore and Associates, the maker of GORE-TEX, is the company Dunbar used to describe the effect of 150 in business organizations. As W. L. Gore and Associates grew and the size of their factory came to exceed 150 people, company founder Bill Gore realized that “that the bigger the company got, people working for the company were much less likely to work hard and help each other out”…“After putting about 150 people in the same building, things at GORE-TEX just did not run smoothly. People couldn’t keep track of each other. Any sense of community was gone.” So Gore made the decision to cap his factories at 150 employees. Whenever they needed to expand the manufacturing capacity, rather than expanding an existing factory, they would just build a new factory—sometimes right next door. Things ran better this way because in smaller factories everyone knew who was who. This allowed them “to do away with hierarchies and management structures: the factory worked by personal relationships, with a sense of mutual obligation encouraging workers and managers to co-operate rather than compete.”

It is implicit in Robin Dunbar’s research that, as humans, our natural state is as part of a group. Our ancestors were all part of a group, and those groups were of course self-governing. In order to maintain group harmony, issues that affected the whole group were undoubtedly widely discussed, with every member being allowed to participate in some way until a consensus was arrived at that everyone could live with. If someone in the group had a concern, he would surely have discussed it first with the people closest to him, and if those people agreed and supported him, they would have helped him build support for the issue within the group.

This is the form of government that people naturally understand and can realistically participate in. It relies on human instincts, such as our natural sense of fairness, our appreciation of trust, and our tendency to comply to peer pressure and behave ourselves—in other words, it’s based on relationships. We developed those instincts so that we could live as part of a group, and only a system of government that relies on those instincts could possibly be truly good and democratic.

We believe that communities of 150 would work best in a system of Local Electors because that is the size that people would be most likely to participate in. Frank Bryan, Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, studied town hall meetings in Vermont, and published the findings of his research in his book Real Democracy. One of his key findings was that the variable that most determines how many people will turn out for town hall meetings is the size of the town. In towns with less than about 200 registered voters, a relatively large percentage of residents generally turned out, but as the number of registered voters increased, turnout dropped off dramatically.

A system of Local Electors with a group size of around 150 would create a foundation for government that is based on relationships from the ground up. Everyone in society would be part of a web of relationships that would start at the individual level and reach up to the highest levels of government. A culture of trust, mutual obligation, and reciprocity would permeate all levels of society, leading to healthier individuals and a much healthier country. The benefits could be enormous.

Since people have an inherent need to be part of a group, groups of this size would draw people into them. People would make friends with their neighbors, enjoy comradery, and feel empowered by their ability to get the government to work for them. Group participation wouldn’t just be about politics, it would be about life—enjoying each other’s company and working together to achieve our common goals and work out our differences. Politics, rather than being about a big, uncontrollable government full of conflict, would be a natural part of life that people would find stimulating and enjoyable. Politics would be (gasp) fun!

It is important to think of government in human terms. Government is about people in every sense. Government can only serve the needs of the people if we think in terms of what works for people at every level. If we base our government on human nature and what people can realistically deal with, we are well on our way to a good government and a better life for everyone.

These are some initial thoughts about community size. Much public discussion is needed in order to improve these ideas, and to come up with new ones so that democracy can be the best it can possibly be.

Continue Reading: Job Description of Local Electors