Upon examination of the term “citizenship by proxy,” we begin to question its meaning. It has a somewhat broad array of significance in the context of United States citizenship, but could be simply defined as allowing another individual(s) to have some form of political or civic power to represent you on your/others behalf. The most common occurrence of this is the election of state and local representatives; a system with a myriad of pros and cons that is often viewed as effective but certainly not perfect. Proxy citizenship constantly begs the question of how accurately the people are represented and at what point does the system do its job or backfire.
Another instance of proxy by citizenship is allowing other citizens to become your proxy as a result of lack of participation. In town-hall meetings and local voting, as well as state-wide and nation-wide voting, if you fail to vote and participate, you are handing your political/civic power to your neighbor or fellow citizen who is voting/engaging politically and civically, whether you agree with them or not. Its a prime example of how lack of action, or even denial of action, can result in a lack of representation. In turn, this can lead to actions the majority don’t agree with, creating political division on local and national levels. When an elected official doesn’t represent the people they hold the proxy for, then the proxy system has failed. Another flaw, of course, are the countless instances where individuals have won a proxy based on certain promises which are never fulfilled.
A closer examination of congress shows a fairly significant imbalance in terms of nationwide representation. As this article by Brookings put it, “Despite its name, the House of Representatives is not so representative.” Data shows that the national voting differential between Democrats and Republicans for the 2016 House election was 1.2 percent in favor of the Republicans. However, the difference in the number of elected congressional seats was 10.8 percent in favor of the Republicans, effectively giving a total of 21 extra seats to Republicans. This frustrating statistic shows the blatant lack of representation by our people’s voice and the flaws of our “citizenship by proxy” system. To make our system work as it should, particularly when it comes to the use of a proxy, people need to participate to their fullest extent and be given the highest ease of access to their civic duties.
Journalism 2.0 