How Do Our Elected Representatives Best Represent Us?

What exactly is the job of our representatives? How should they vote in order to serve their constituents best?

I guess this is what I'm really asking: Should our elected representatives always vote the way that the majority of those they represent want them to, or should they vote they way they feel is best, even if most of their constituents don't agree?

The health care bill got me thinking about this. Some polls show that most Americans don't agree with the current health care bill and think that it should be scrapped and started over. However, a higher percentage of representatives support it than the American public. This made me wonder if representatives should always vote the way the majority of their constituents believe even if they disagree with it, or if they should vote for what they think is best.

I've always thought the reason we elect representatives instead of having a direct democracy so that they can make decisions in our best interest since the average person cannot be educated or informed enough to make the best decision for themselves. It is our representatives full time job to be educated and informed. If representatives are always supposed to vote the way the majority of those they represent feel, then there wouldn't be the need for representatives. Specifically with the health care bill, the representatives voting on it are far more familiar with it and what impact it will have than me or any other average person who would comment on it. Whether or not I agree with the bill, I have to trust that my representative will vote the way that they feel is in the best interest of me and the rest of the people in my district based on the fact that they are more educated and informed than me.

So, should representatives always make decisions based on what the majority of their constituents feel, or on what they think is best for their constituents regardless of popularity?

krambman wrote: How Do Our Elected Representatives Best Represent Us?

What exactly is the job of our representatives? How should they vote in order to serve their constituents best?

I guess this is what I'm really asking: Should our elected representatives always vote the way that the majority of those they represent want them to, or should they vote they way they feel is best, even if most of their constituents don't agree?

The health care bill got me thinking about this. Some polls show that most Americans don't agree with the current health care bill and think that it should be scrapped and started over. However, a higher percentage of representatives support it than the American public. This made me wonder if representatives should always vote the way the majority of their constituents believe even if they disagree with it, or if they should vote for what they think is best.

I've always thought the reason we elect representatives instead of having a direct democracy so that they can make decisions in our best interest since the average person cannot be educated or informed enough to make the best decision for themselves. It is our representatives full time job to be educated and informed. If representatives are always supposed to vote the way the majority of those they represent feel, then there wouldn't be the need for representatives. Specifically with the health care bill, the representatives voting on it are far more familiar with it and what impact it will have than me or any other average person who would comment on it. Whether or not I agree with the bill, I have to trust that my representative will vote the way that they feel is in the best interest of me and the rest of the people in my district based on the fact that they are more educated and informed than me.

So, should representatives always make decisions based on what the majority of their constituents feel, or on what they think is best for their constituents regardless of popularity?

The vast majority do not and they could care less. They are interested in their lobbyists and corporations.

I think the term "representative" kind of says it all.

They don't. Once you vote for them, they couldn't care less about you.

krambman wrote: How Do Our Elected Representatives Best Represent Us?

What exactly is the job of our representatives? How should they vote in order to serve their constituents best?
...........

I've always thought the reason we elect representatives instead of having a direct democracy so that they can make decisions in our best interest since the average person cannot be educated or informed enough to make the best decision for themselves.

This is why the American people are sooooo screwed right now.
Why?

Because our government believes this, too.

We hire those people to be the voice of their constituents.
Not their Daddy.

CenterBHSFan wrote: This is why the American people are sooooo screwed right now.
Why?

Because our government believes this, too.

We hire those people to be the voice of their constituents.
Not their Daddy.

I don't necessarily agree.

A) If their role is to simply be a "yes man" for the majority of their constituency, then why employ them at all? At that point, they have no more purpose.

B) I don't think it is necessarily becoming a "daddy" to the populace. They OUGHT TO (I'm going idealistic here) be familiar with the governmental process and the issues of the day, and they ought to be elected as such: men and women who understand the system and are able to give serious thought to supporting the best solution they can.

C) If they are intended to do nothing more than relay the answers of their constituency (basically act like the pony express between their constituents and Washington), then there is no room for them to exercise convictions. Do we really want people in Washington whose jobs involve no thinking for themselves?

Essentially, if all they are employed to do is to echo the sentiments of the majority of their constituency, couldn't we just fire them all? Computers would be capable of filling that role now.

Edmund Burke said it best.

"I am sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that topic had been passed by at a time when I have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject.

He tells you that "the topic of instructions has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city;" and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favour of the coercive authority of such instructions.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.[/b]

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for."