Do I have political representations? You might think so, since I live in a country in which we vote for our leaders. But what if no congressman I vote for has ever been elected? How am I represented then? This isn’t a hypothetical question. None of my choices have been elected. The problem is that to the extent that I want any of the available options (which is rare), I vote for those who represent political viewpoints, rather than regions.

You see, though these are national elections, meant to elect those who make laws for the whole nation, the representatives are elected to serve regional interests–a big reason we have pork barrel spending and related problems. With the right changes, we could have local officials to handle local issues, state lawmakers look out for the interests of the state, and national legislators serve the whole nation.

As it is now, there can be millions of people who share common political beliefs, yet never have a representative in Washington. This happens if they are neither Republicans nor Democrats, and they are spread across the nation. A candidate outside the two parties could not be elected even if 10% of the people in a state voted for him. This suggests that tens of millions of people in the country could not ever have political representation unless they all chose to move to one state.

My suggestion? Anyone who can get 400,000 signatures of registered voters designating him or her as a representative can go to Washington and represent those voters. As voters we get to sign for one each six years. By the way, there might be 4 million people who share some of my basic concerns, and we can get no true representation now, even if we were organized. Under this new system we could have ten representatives.

Here are a few questions to consider about political representation and how we might actually achieve it:

1. Should we have districts based on geography, which encourage representation of petty local interests over political ideals?

2. Apart from the system I recommend above, what other ways could we design a democracy to have more representation of peoples beliefs and core values rather than representation of matters that are purely local?

3. If nobody I ever vote for gets into the national government, how am I in any way represented any more than those who broke from England and founded this country because of “taxation without representation?”

4. If I do not have any interest in having special laws to benefit primarily the district in which I live, do I have no right to representation on any other basis?