A key part of democracy is active political representation. Its main purpose should be to act on behalf of the people who it is representing. Representation is defined, for the purposes of this course, as an elected official who acts as an intermediary between the People and the political process. He will advocate and make known what the people want. Once these officials have been democratically elected, they serve by making known the needs of the people they represent and addressing those needs through reform and action or non-action. There must exist a monitoring by the people through organizations that holds the elected officials accountable to their line of duty. (Dovi, 2011)When elected officials are up for re-election, the people show their approval or lack there of by re-electing them for political office. This can be considered an indicator of the political process working in democracy. In the federal level representatives of the fifty states gather year round and discuss policy issues in committees. They debate, voice out their personal opinions and that of their constituents and come to a consensus on what will be decided. Then end result should be a consensus on what policy decisions are best for the country as a whole and not what is best for their individual state. This becomes important for the process to work so that representation may be served equally amongst the people. In our class activity we got to go through mail that Congressman Johnson received during the time of the Vietnam War. We were instructed to tally all those we thought to be for the war and all those opposing the war. In the end we were to decide what his decision should be based on his constituents desires. The exercise demonstrated that there will exist winners and losers in the political process. Representation is the sum of what a group of people wants and what will be good for the whole body. When representation fails to meet both, it no longer can claim to be proportional. Presently there exists disproportional representation. This indicates that not enough is being done to hold elected officials accountable when serving the people. This responsibility lies on the people as they exercise their right by voting.

Works Cited

Dovi, S. (2011, Oct 17). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved Sep 1, 2015, from standford.edu: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-representation/