Selecting Congress the way we select jurors

To improve our Republic we should select members of The House of Representatives in a similar way we select jurors.

Too many members of congress are bought by lobbyists with money and group voting. This is why Bastiat's quote, "The law is about one group plundering another group" has come true. With random selection of members of The House of Representatives this opportunity for plunder would diminish.

The two party system is about power and perks. The majority party in power gets to elect the Speaker of the House who appoints the committee chairs. The Speaker of the House has enormous power and perks; a military jet to travel in, a large staff, and many media interviews.

The political party that is in power gets to chair all the congressional committees. These committee chairs have the best offices, a larger staff, and more media interviews.

The party in power can raise more money through campaign contributions from lobbyists hoping to buy favors.

Members of congress usually vote on a bill before reading the bill. They vote the way their party leaders tell them to vote. In the future each member of the House of Representatives should be required to read a bill completely before voting "Yes" for the bill. Members who vote "No" or "Abstain" will not be required to read the complete bill.

If we select members of congress by the same way we select jurors we will eliminate the antagonistic two party political system that collects power and perks and divides the spoils of government power. Members selected randomly like jurors will vote their consciences more often than the way lobbyists want them to vote.

We should select a member to the House of Representatives to represent each district. No district should contain more than 500,000 people. This increase in congressional representatives is needed as currently each congressional representative represents an average of over 647,000 people in each district. Try contacting your representative and you will get a staff member. There is no way the ordinary citizens who is not a member of some powerful group can get an audience with their so called representative, who constantly tells us they represent us. They represent an area, and they represent those who have the most clout, the most money, and the organizations with the most members who will vote, like the American Association of Retired People, or some subcontractor of some weapons system.

The districts would select each representative the way they select jurors, in a public televised forum. The potential jurors should be interviewed by the professional staff, not about their political views, but just about their reading and comprehension skills to see if they are qualified to serve. A professional psychologist should be allowed to ask a few questions. One person from an approved list of those who pass will be randomly drawn from the list to serve in congress.

The district would hire a professional staff for the representatives to show the inexperienced representatives how the congress works. This way the representatives would not be obligated to vote for the lobbyists who have the lobbying and financial power. Imagine a small business owner serving in congress and getting to vote on a bad piece of legislation that was written to protect big corporations from competition.

The selection process should have each member serve from six months to no more than two years, depending on the selected representative's life needs.

Update June 23, 2009-- The current way of electing the 435 members of the House of Representatives can remain the same. One additional member that is needed to more represent the people can be selected from each district by the juror selection process. This would double the number of members in the House of Representatives and reduce the average number of citizens represented by each representative from over 700,000 to less than 400,000. Members who are selected by the juror process could, after serving their jury term, run for one of the elected positions. This would help prevent career politicians.

Charles Tolleson