Winston Churchill said, "Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government"
oh wait, I didn't finish that sentence.
"except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
I'm certainly not going to say that our system is perfect. and there are no ways to improve it. But I don't see your suggestions being an improvement.
Bills are complicated. Issues are complicated. policies are complicated. The reason our forefathers chose a representation government instead of a true democracy is that voting on a handful of reps is so much easier than voting on dozens of laws, and polices.
Here in California we have the refrendum where people can vote on particular issues. I think I am an above average consumer of news and pretty good at critical thinking too. But each year there is at least one referendum that I can't figure out. Some times one side has more money than the other and in those cases at least half the time the big money wins.
Each member of the house of rep (both state and federal) are supposed to represent equal amounts of the population. Its not perfect but its close.
Without looking I can tell you both of my US state senators and my representative (Who I have met with on a few occasions. Personally I don't like her but I love her voting record).
I have to stop and think of my state representatives. Mostly that is because they are so safely entrenched that there is no need for me to get involved in their election campaigns. And unlike the US government, I'm pretty happy with the California government. Color me complacent.
Back when I was working a lot of us would get together in the break room with our ballots to make sure we got the issues straight. the local paper usually had a special section that also helped. And our union rep usually came by and provided the unions viewpoints, too. I think the only sticking points are the referendums which are sometimes obfuscated with poorly written language.
Basically it takes less than an hour to figure out who to vote for. In fact if you have a trusted source it can take just a minute to just vote for the recommendations. I don't think that is asking too much.
BTW, here in California everyone gets a mail-in ballot. I'm not sure how long that has gone on - I never use mine. Not even this year. I like to vote in person. And I can take my "I voted" sticker and leverage it to get free coffee. My polling place is like a 5 minute walk and the lines are super short.
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