Idea: gridlock has besieged Washington. Our representatives are pegged to ideological extremes.

The 24-hour newscycle and cartoonish nature of political coverage on the cable networks have reduced public awareness to black and white soundbites with nuance brushed aside. Compromise and centrism are portrayed as weakness.

In parallel, special interests use fundraising power to establish legislative agendas that don't have the greater good at heart.

With anonymous voting, corporate checkwriters would have no idea if they are getting what they paid for and the lobby money would dry up. Meanwhile, members of Congress could get back to public service and reasonable laws would result.

Thoughts?

Not sure I buy your central premise that lack of transparency would lead to companies ceasing lobbying. At best, it would perhaps move it to SuperPAC style election spending to ensure sympathetic representatives hold the offices you need.

I do like the general topic though of "The US government is a 250 year old Operating System. What would you change in order to improve it." For example, I'm not convinced two 4-year terms are necessarily right for the presidency.

Hunter opening up a can of worms.

I love the idea of congress voting anonymously - our system feels broken and it might lead to more bi-partisanship. I also think that approach would lead to an unbundling of special interest items that get added in the fine detail to each substantial issue.

And back to Hunters's point - why can't government experiment with ideas like this - try it for 6-12 months and see what happens.

Even if anonymity worked to restrain lobbying, wouldn't you also lose important information as a voter? Do we really think that voting under the cover of darkness would lead to moral behavior? You lose the check & balance of public record!

I'm not convinced the check & balance of public record is working - look at how much mission critical legislation stalled due to partisanship. I like the idea of testing a new system. Think about gun control, I can't imagine we wouldn't make progress here if votes were taken anonymously. Same goes for the jobs act, farm aid, universal healthcare, etc - and then look at what happened to Lugar in Indiana - he got run out of office because he voted with the left 2 or 3 times - what kind of message did that send to all incumbents? Even if they voted anonymously, congress people could disclose their voting record if they felt it was appropriate.

Anonymity definitely didn't produce good results when it came to Senate anonymous holds. There was no accountability for obstructionist behavior so folks just went wild.

I think Hunter's point is also good. How do I know I'm actually being represented according to my views?