Politics Today: Citizen Voices Ignored

A problem in politics today is that many Americans feel their opinion is being ignored by their elected leaders. Once in office, our elected officials (who are supposed to represent citizen interests) fall under the sway of lobbyists, powerful money that supports their election coffers, radical ideology, and yes, strongmen. Our opinions have an effect only every two years when there is a national or state election, which is a long time for a bad decision to be mistakenly implemented and then not corrected.

As a solution, I am proposing a national quarterly online poll which addresses the most pressing questions of the day conducted March, June, September and December of each year. Such a poll would take the form of a yes or no question such as “Should America militarily take over Greenland ?” or “ Does the executive branch of the federal government have the power to impose tariffs without congressional approval?” or “Should current subsidies be extended for Obamacare” etc…Furthermore, such polls could be also conducted on a state and local basis to answer questions that exist at these governmental levels.

The questions should be formulated in a clear and concise manner in a one sentence format. There would be a politically neutral independent commission which would formulate the question based on the number of articles about the subject appearing online, in print as well as broadcast media using AI as a tabulating resource to determine question eligibility for the quarterly poll.

As well as tabulating the results, there should be a space for individual comments under each question with the most incisive being included in the final quarterly report. Qualification to answer the poll should be based on proof of citizenship. I realize there are many questions to be answered about this idea, but I think there needs to be a citizen voice that is more powerful and more timely than the one that exists today.

Mike Meehan, CFA, MBA 1/16/2026