http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/19/f … egislature...
But there is a real “citizen legislature” idea that might soon be circulating as an initiative for the November 2012 ballot. The Neighborhood Legislature Reform Act is counterintuitive: It dramatically increases the number of Assembly members and state senators. The initiative would provide thousands of new neighborhood legislators, who would elect a smaller group that would actually go the capitol and do the normal business of legislating. It sounds wacky, but pay attention to the details before rendering judgment.
As the initiative explains, “Our state Legislature does not serve the interests of the citizens. The Legislature only serves the special interests. Prior attempts at reform have all failed. The problem is that our Legislative districts are too big and cost taxpayers too much money. Our Legislators represent too many constituents. The average assembly district in the other 49 states has approximately 50,000 citizens. The average assembly district in California is nearly 10 times larger...”
California’s districts are so large that regular citizens do not have the hope of influencing their legislator. Winning elections in such large districts means raising lots of cash and candidates can only do that by becoming beholden to special interests. The initiative idea—funded initially by former GOP presidential candidate and venture capitalist John Cox—would flood the state with citizen legislators/representatives who represent smaller numbers of Californians.
...
This is actually rather brilliant. We all bitch about being under-represented and most of that has to do with the sheer number of people each representative is supposed to nominally represent. My two state senators are supposed to hear the voices of 18,000,000 or so people. Not gonna happen.
In 1903 this country had 76,000,000 residents and 325 members of the House of Representatives. (233,000 citizens per representative)
Today, we have 307,000,000 residents and 435 Representatives (706,000 citizens per representative)
Over time, we've gotten further and further away from the seat of power and our voices have been even more diluted. If that bill passes in California, I think it would be a step in the right direction towards proper representation.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
