It is my contention that every citizen should have a basic knowledge of who each of their representatives are. This includes their basic policy stances and key voting record.
At least I think this is a reasonable expectation. That said, after I actually looked up every one of my representatives, I started to doubt my position. I have a lot of reps. When you add up the state reps and the county reps and the local city council and the school board members with the federal folks, we’re at thirty people!
I’m daunted, but not deterred. I’m going to try. Here’s my full list of representatives.
As a part of my ongoing project, I’m going to work to identify and learn about each of my reps. Then identify one or more I may want to support politically, work with on a future project or volunteer for a campaign / issue. This is the plan, anyway.
My goal for Q1 2023
- Spend 1 hour for each rep doing a basic name search. What comes up? Big news items? What are they most known for in the ‘news’?
- Spend 1 hour each looking up voting history, actions or decisions on the job
- Read at least one speech or interview by each rep
This should be enough to get a basic understanding of who each representative is. That said, as I thought about it, I realized I actually needed to add one crucial task, even before I start on those.
What do you do?
I think, before I start getting into any individual representatives, I need to understand just what each representative actually does? In my city, I have to vote for the county clerk, county register, surrogate and commissioner. If you told me, right now, my life depended on explaining their jobs accurately, I would say the commissioner ‘commissions’, the register ‘registers’ and the clerk is a secretary. And then I would die, because I know that can’t be right. But I should know these things. So before I start on the above 3 goals for Q1, I’ll complete the 4th:
- Get myself up to speed on the job functions of each of my 30 representatives
Future Quarters
For the future, I’ll dive into more specific details on each rep. My goal will be to spend at least, of not more time for my local representatives as I do for my national ones. If all politics are local, I’m assuming that’s where I can make the most impact. So I’ll spend more time there. These are some of the things I’ll be looking at.
- Additional speeches or interviews
- Outlining major policy positions
- Look up at least one political opponent (current or past) and outline disagreements
- Review candidates web site
- Review candidate’s social media
- Review career positions and voting history
- Review committees served on
- Review candidate’s funding sources
Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash
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