The Irish House of Commons, 1780 by Francis Wheatley. Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain. Is representation outdated, and should we rethink it? At this year's World Forum for Democracy, we posed the question to three participants:
Lauren West-Livingston, student at Wake School of Medicine, US
“The United States is actually a democratic republic: we elect officials to make our decisions for us, so it’s very important that we vote someone that represents their constituents. Sometimes in our elections we vote for someone – there’s a popular vote – and then our representatives don’t vote the same as the people, which has been an issue in the last few elections. We have our election on Tuesday, and it’s really important to see if our local governors and local state representatives will represent those who voted for them and their interests. I would rather see a full democracy, in which people’s votes count directly for the policies instead of elected representatives who make the decisions for them, because of the disconnect that happens rarely, but does happen. But we still have a long way for that.”
