Most people do not have time to invest in every issue.
YES, THEY DO, in fact that is their only constitutional duty, to be an informed electorate, and if you fail to try that's when your rep may stray for the desires you regularly inform them of. it is each citizens responsibility to remain informed and it takes a very few minutes to make a call, write an email or for greater impact pen a polite note/letter about the issues.
If they FAIL it is the voters fault not the rep receiving limited(mostly lobbist) input. Do it now , don't whine later
Doesn't even have to be a few nights a week. Any body can follow the link in Karl's story and read the bills text in a minute (or 5, most important to read and UNDERSTAND) and anyone who posted here has time for an email. Remembering you can ask for clarification/the intended purpose of the bill from your rep and then write again if you want to give a thumbs up or down on this SPECIFIC bill. that's 10-15 minutes total to learn about and send 2 emails letting YOUR rep know you have CONTINUING interest in this subject and will be watching the voting results. 10-15 to influence 1 item that can effect your communication cost and home value by $1000's over the years. even with education tax and other issues it shouldn't take more than an hour a week to keep in touch with state and local issues maybe another hour for a basic federal effort and in return regain control over the biggest bill/debt/paycheck you will every see.
Sorry not buying it, and it voids the whole main purpose of having representatives ( or a Republic for of government )
Letters to your representative are generally filtered by a clerk ( and now computers ), and the vast majority never make it through.
What your advocating is pushing Democracy through a Republic centered system. It doesn't work because it can't ( see statement above ).
Yes, it some cases public outcry pushes a representative one way, but that is usually the media heavily pushing an agenda and a certain representative taking the bluff so to speak.
Politicians value ACTUAL voter contact even more then money. Lobbyist can provide money but ONLY voters can re-elect them. All of them have staff members dedicated to reading the mail and keeping a tally of their constituent's contacts and all of contacted have responded either directly or through staff.
Of course the requests for info or expressions of opinions need to be clearly worded, polite, and within the framework of reality. Threats, pointless rants, and conspircy laced manifestos don't do well in convincing anyone to do anything. and No you won't get your own way all the time, but a Polititian who may get 2-300 mentions (not driven by the timing of web petitions or press, orgainzed groups ) in comments will place much greater weight on those individual comments than thousands of MASS produced poll #'s. Perhaps you flail away here, because YOU gave up on the system, not because the system knowingly shut you out. I'm just suggesting that for any Kansas voter that will to give the system a chance, that THIS is the moment when you can be effective, waiting until it's a done deal and then ranting only to each other is really pointless.
So you have chosen to abdicate your only constitutional responsibility because it takes too much time to exercise, makes you communicate with gov't officials in an identifiable way, or because you don't think YOU should have to bear any cost, work or responsibility for the governing of the country?
really? And where does the average voter get the information from? Most commercial media do not bring this kind of info. And more and more folks work overtime and two jobs and what else just to survive. The only thing they get is propaganda, at it's usually the big money who can afford a big propaganda. I will not even get into the Putin style electoral system, with artificial districts, often no run offs, manipulation, or , like in our state 500000 voters being permanently kept from voting. The voters did not catch the scheme on time and now it's too late.
While I agree with your basic argument, let me just toss this in.
The rep also need to do a little homework. How about a healthy dose of skepticism when it come to industry\lobbyist endorsed legislation? Nobody expects a Kansas state rep to become an expert on telecommunications policy, but when AT & T comes knocking on your door, they most likely aren't advocating anything for the greater good.