This Trump - Cummings thing got me to thinking. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. So should congress members be rated and compared to their peers? It seems as though there should be some type of metric that should be able to let the congress member see how effective he/she is at representing his constituents along with letting the voters see how effective they are and how well they work with their peers…
For example, In the military, often your peers would rate how they see you. Do your peers see you looking out for the team and were you approachable or were you only interested in your own success. Another thing you were rated on by your peers was how well you accepted responsibility for your own shortcomings or if you always tried to blame others for your failures. If your peers rated you badly, that could have many negative effects later on.
So what if an objective measure were set up on each congress member and they were rated every year on how effective they were? What if these results were published for everyone to see? What if all 435 members were ranked numerically with the best being a number 1 and the worst being a number 435. If this system were implemented, even by the AP, we might not even need term limits, You had better believe if a guy was in the top 10% in his ratings, he would be running non stop adds of his effectiveness during the campaign. If he was in the bottom 10%, his challenger would be running that in his adds.
So what would be an effective OBJECTIVE measuring system that wasnt subjective? If this is done, there should be at least 10 different areas in this evaluation. A person could be in the top 5 in one area, but dead last in another. So all those scores have to be totaled to get an overall assessment.
One thing that I think could be measured would be how many new jobs were brought into your district during the last two years. It would seem to me to be an easy metric. All pols say they are going to revitalize their district. Lets give them a rating to see how well they did. The person who brought in the most jobs would be number 1, the next 2, all the way down to 435.
Another area to measure could be education. How well did a congress person help serve his / her district with HS graduation rates and SOLs. Shouldnt it be shown what areas are not performing so that we can see what is working in some areas and concentrate our efforts on the areas that are behind? Lets give the congress member with best district in education a 1. Every other member gets a 2 to 435 depending on how their district did in College graduation rates, HS graduation rates, and SOLs
How about the poverty rate in an area? Is their any excuse for an inner city to be living at or below the poverty rate for over 30 continuous years? Lets take all 435 congress people and assign them a number on their district. What ever district has the highest poverty rate is 435. Who ever has the lowest is 1, and everyone is is put in somewhere between 2 and 434.
How about the crime rate in an area? Is their any excuse for any child to be sleeping on the floor because of gun violence? Lets take all 435 congress people and assign them a number on their district. What ever district has the highest crime rate is 435. Who ever has the lowest is 1, and everyone is is put in somewhere between 2 and 434.
Finally, what if every member assigned every other member of congress a number from 1 to 434. They rate the effectiveness of every other member, but not themselves. Who ever had the highest number would be seen as the most helpful and hardest working. Whoever had the lowest number would be seen as the most difficult to work with. It would kind of be like the NCAA Coaches poll with every member required to rate his or her peers.
What areas do you think could be measured objectively?
