[paxhmpqt] Tracing government actions back to your vote

For each act of government that makes you unhappy (or happy), trace it back to democracy in action -- your vote in an election, or someone else's -- that caused it.  Record then the reasons why the person voted that way, and review those reasons now.  (Random sampling is sufficient.)

On one hand, this is difficult because we need to show that an alternative action (voting for a different candidate) would have resulted in a better outcome.  Perhaps the better candidate was eliminated (or voluntarily dropped out) much earlier in the campaign primary cycle.

On the other hand, people voting or making other decisions in democracy for bad reasons should not be too difficult to document.  Let people get feedback on previous mistakes to learn to avoid repeating them.

Ideally, we need a way to track losing candidates after an election and know how they would have voted.  Perhaps possible with a sufficiently transparent government.  But legislators and executives have staffs.  Who pays for the lost candidates to keep doing this?

This would require a great change in how we do things.  But it doesn't require "inside" change; it could be done unilaterally by an outsider.

The broad motivation was the depressing saying, "You don't get the government you want, you get the government you deserve."  Let's not be depressed but instead try to fix what's going wrong.

The specific motivation was the John Edwards pregnant mistress scandal.  He sought to hide it because he thought it would decrease his electability.  But from this, how do you know he would have been a worse President?  If people are making their voting decisions based on things like this, they are (in general) going to get the government they deserve.