Diane: In your short response, you have actually brought up quite a few issues. I just try to address them as best I can:

In essence, is this not how districts, municipalities and provincial elections are supposed to work?

Not sure what you mean here. In Canada, we have three layers of government: federal, provincial, and municipal. No districts that I know of. Federal and provincial have political parties. Municipal does not. This a is more an accident of history as Canada just assumed the Westminster model of governance from Britain in 1867.

I have found it interesting how many people vote for people rather than parties at a local level - the right person does matter more when it affects your daily life.

Again, municipal elections have no political parties. So aspiring councillors somehow have to get their names and messages out there. They cannot rely on political parties to deliver that message.

However what I do see is that the type of people elected at a local level remain the same. Rich, powerful, with lots of free time on their hands.

Yep. It's hard for average people to be elected. Smaller municipalities have opportunity for average people. But elsewhere, politics requires a big sacrifice just to campaign.

Some seem to have aspirations for higher-level political office, and approach this as a career move.

For some municipal councillors, this is their goal.

Others suffered a particular problem with a previous "regime" and pursue one specific change of personal significance.

Yep. They may be "held accountable" for that specific change, but they vote for many other things while in office. It's silly to have one-issue candidates.

When there is a referendum on a specific issue (we have them often in our district) , the "common good" doesn't come into it. If people suspect they might be personally inconvenienced, they will lobby. The "not affected" will go with the most vocal complainers.

Many political scientists would say this is how the system should work. Voters vote for their self interests. Then the democratic process somehow find the compromise. If there are voters looking for the "common good", then the common good should be appropriately discarded.

I feel that technology is one answer. Each person can vote all the time. And change their vote. Daily opinion polls at an individual level. One citizen, one vote.

I ran into a fellow about 15 years ago with an interesting idea of how to bring in technology. I have yet to hear of anyone else thinking along this line. His system will indeed give people more influence in the legislative deliberations. My article on his system is here:

http://www.tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/blog_details.php?blog_cat_id=20&id=34

And education. We HAVE to do something about logic skills, and help people question how they think and what pushes their buttons.

I can't argue with that. But I don't have a simple answer. The early TDG will need to spend some effort into educating its newer members about this new way of governance.