Here is a high tech way to restore accountability in Congress

There are now approximately 210 million cell phones in the U.S. most of which have text messaging capabilities to them.

What if each member of the House and Senate solicited their constituents to record their cell phone numbers in the members data base by sending this information to the members email site. Each time a member is about to vote on a major issue, that member would text message each number in the data base briefly describing the bill and asking the recipient constituent how he or she wants the member to vote (yay or nay). Those not having cell-phones could have the message directed to their email address. The messages would be tallied instantaneously and posted on the members website for all to see. If the member votes against the will of the majority, he must then face the consequences.

The cost to do a text message I am told is about 5 cents per call. Assuming that 100 million people are in the data base and each is text messaged 10 times per year the total cost would be $50,000,000. This is a spit in the bucket compared to the entire federal budget and could easily be paid for by the Federal Government.

It is time that we restore accountability back to the people and make our government truly of the people, by the people and for the people.

The 210 million cell phones do not correspond to 210 million of the 290 million people in the USA. The percentage is much, MUCH lower.

This works great ... except votes from poor people are never counted. Congratulations, you have just reinforced the Republican agenda.

How naive can you be? Go down to the inner city and see how many people are walking around with cell phones. Get real!

Not everyone who lives in the inner city is desolately poor. But everyone who's desolately poor would starve to death if they spent $30 a month on a cell phone plan.

Conceptually, Ugnmoose's OP is spot on. I don't think Republicas would ever support technology that would allow us to direct our Congress on how to cast their votes. Cell phones would certainly be an ideal way to receive and transmit our preferences, but there could be other ways....an 800# could be used to dial-in and a voter, using a password, could vote that way. To torpedo this idea on the basis that some are too poor to afford cell phones is like the arguement to censor the Internet because some of the users are children.

No sale.

That is the reason we have a Democratic Republic instead of just plain Democracy. If majority ruled all the time Blacks would still be slaves and women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.