What happens when you vote? You get a certain amount of say over who takes office. But what happens once they take office? How do you stay in touch with the person you elected and hold them accountable?
Well, that’s where the wheels fall off the wagon… Most people do not have consistent access to their political representatives. You can send an email or a letter, or try to set up an appointment, or go to a rally. But our mechanisms of delivering detailed critiques or instructions on policy are usually limited either by access to the lawmakers or information about what’s actually happening on Capitol Hill or your State House. That’s one reason lobbyists do so well… their combination of access, information, and influence allows them to help craft legislation in ways few others of us can. Of particular note: NPR’s recent series on how Arizona’s SB1070 law, about immigration, was massaged and given help replicating to other states by a private prison industry group. Even if a lawmaker like Russell Pearce believes in the substance of the law — and after meeting him, I certainly think he does — it still raises questions about who really has power, the citizens or the people who hold purse strings.
Could it be that part of the whipsaw of dissatisfaction is that voting seems like the ONLY mechanism by which to shape policy? If so, it’s a limited one. What happens between the elections is, arguably, more important than what happens during them. And there are ways for citizens to interact with politicans. It’s just hard…. harder than it should be.
