According to Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, "The Number of Representatives [in the House] shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand."
I believe I could find thirty thousand Kossacks who feel they have no Representative in Congress. We may be geographically disparate. We may not be of the same social class. We may not be of the same race, the same family. We may not know each other, or we may know each other only through the internet, never having met in person. That might be true.
But my vote is not an ear of corn. My vote does not grow in the land. It grows from my hands, because I am a citizen of the United States of America, and that's what being a citizen means. It grows from my heart, from my head, from me. It cannot be taken away from me. It cannot be sold, it cannot be bought. I can not lose my ownership of it. I cannot even give it away. It is mine, to do with what I will.
Imagine thirty thousand of us prepared to vote for one person as at-large Representative in the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress. One citizen, one vote: thirty thousand Americans who are willing to give up the vote for Representative in our geographic districts, and instead cast our votes in our real district: their virtual one.
We would not raise a war chest, nor get approval of a political party, nor buy television ads, nor get a mention on a national Op-Ed page. These things are not required by the U.S. Constitution. One representative for every thirty thousand is.
Not allowing our elected Representative to serve in the U.S. Congress is a violation of the Constitution of the United States of America, the highest law in the land. We need one representative for every thirty thousand. We can have thirty thousand U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, who are prepared to vote, right now, for one person. Not next November, not after they have a chance to talk to their donors, not when they have lead time to buy air time in prime time. Now.
Let us be clear: If we got thirty thousand together behind one person, not allowing her to serve as a Representative in the Congress would be a violation of the Constitution of the United States of America.
What if we kept it a secret? What if this thirty-thousand (or, let's play it safe, one hundred thousand) could be organized discretely? An invitation-only webpage, for example, where U.S. citizens can sign to state that they are prepared to cast their vote for one person (digby, say)? Keep it under wraps, until we hit that magic one hundred thousand, and send a press release to every politician in washington, every newspaper, every cable company, saying that we have one hundred thousand people who are voting for digby to start serving right now. And counting our votes is your problem, not ours.
How would one start something like that? Well, I'd start it with a semi-stirring message in a semi-public forum like this one, with an opportunity to send me a private message. And I'd hope someone sent me a message, and those of us who messaged each other, and kept it on the downlow, would start asking individuals we trusted. When we got 500 people to agree, we'd talk to digby and strategize the next level. We'd all agree: not a word of this on the webpages that the right can read, too. Only people we trust, so we can control the message, we control how this goes down.
Just saying.