... and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.Senate Oath of Office

I've been doing some research for an idea I had, and I came across this page that list US Senators, in order of the percentage of votes that they have missed. Interestingly, the top of the list consists of McCain, Obama, Clinton and Tim Johnson (who was recovering from a brain hemmorage). I don't know about the rest of you, but if I skipped out on 33% of my job, I'd be fired, and fast. (Let alone 43% or 62%.) Seriously, these people are asking for a promotion when they aren't doing the job they were hired for. And we wonder why this system is broken.

In other news, as far as the "Change we can believe in"... Obama as voted along party lines 96% of the time this session of congress. Which means that the senator who is supposed to be representing me has either not voted, or rubber-stamped his party's position almost 600 times. When are we going to actually get some candidates worth voting for?

I have an idea to reform US federal politics. I just came up with this yesterday, so it needs a vast amount of refinement and improvement, but hear me out.

The way our system is structured (despite what many people seem to think) it's congress that has the power. The function of the senate is to be more temperate and calm, but the House is supposed to reflect the will of the people. The Senate is long term planning, the House is short-term reaction. The shorter terms and smaller-group, population based selection of the House reflects this. However, our nation has become, in some ways, too homogeneous for geographically based assigning of representative districts to work well. So, my idea is to change how representatives are elected. Rather than drawing districts by arbitrary geographic boundaries, which allows for gerrymandering, as well as insuring that in some districts, some minority populations effectively have no representation; I would suggest making Representatives directly elected, by the population as a whole.

Term length would become "at the pleasure of the people". At any time a group could gather 10,000 signatures to call for a replacement of a Representative. This would force a special election, in which all candidates would be selected by write in. A minimum of 30,000 votes for a person would make them eligible for the seat, and the person with the most votes above 30,000 would then take the seat. If no one got 30,000 votes, the incumbent would retain their seat.

This would serve as a method of allowing minority groups to band together to insure that they had at least one representative, and add a performance review aspect to the election. Rather than unseating "your" existing Representative, you could unseat the one who is least effective, and therefore has the least support.

I think this would lead to a more vibrant and dynamic House of Representatives, that would more accurately reflect the populace's desires.

Like I said, there are a lot of holes in this theory, but it's a start.