I'm just waiting for the news to come out in the next few decades that the CIA/NSA have been rigging election results in the US. Given their track record and their machiavellian nature, I would be shocked if they weren't doing this.
They don't rig elections in the way you think they do. People vote, the votes get counted. They rig elections by gerrymandering the districts. The result is a large number of single party districts whose members therefore serve forever, since there is no primary for an incumbent's party and the district is drawn so that the opposing party has no chance. Then you throw in the seniority rules that give the most important committee assignments to the people who have been in Washington the longest (i.e. the ones with gerrymandered districts), and have the national party throw a few million bucks behind the primary campaign of "their" candidate whenever one of those incumbents retires, and you have the respective major parties' national committees acting as the kingmaker whenever the outcomes in the few remaining swing districts shift the majority their way.
The failure of the whole thing is that people don't care about meta. Lessig said this in one of this talks. It isn't that his issue (i.e. campaign finance) is more important than your issue whatever it may be, it's that fixing Democracy is a prerequisite to fixing anything else. But people want jobs and low taxes and whatever else that directly affects their lives, they don't care about things like Congressional district lines. The trouble is Congressional district lines and committee assignments and campaign finance are the primary determinants of what policies are adopted in Washington, so if you want politicians to do the right thing first you have to fix the way we elect politicians.
Think of the implications:
It's a psychological fact that people tend to develop the strongest loyalties to those that they spend the most time with. If you spend the year in your home district, you develop attachments to your constituents. They are your neighbors, your friends, your kids' playmates' parents. Betraying them for some big corporation becomes much more emotionally difficult.
Lobbying becomes virtually impossible. Lobbying works today because you can hire one lobbyist in Washington who has time to hobnob with dozens of congressional reps. That facetime is what makes the congressman takes the lobbyist seriously. If the congressman was required to reside in his own district, then any company wishing to pass legislation in their interest needs to hire 200+ lobbyists, one for each of the districts that must vote their way. Suddenly it's a lot less economical to buy Congress.
Gerrymandering becomes residentially undesirable. Are you going to add a poor black neighborhood just to gain some Democratic votes if you have to live there? Do you add the fundamentalist Christian neighborhood to pick up Republican votes even though you can't stand the folks there? Add a law that the congressman must meet with his constituents regularly, and the idea of gerrymandering districts becomes even less attractive, as suddenly you have to drive a long distance for dinners & events and stuff.
Direct citizen participation in government becomes possible again, as it becomes possible to meet directly with your congressperson and raise a pressing issue.
Representatives will be much more clued into the "pulse" of their district, and aware of how the choices they make in government affect ordinary citizens of this country.
The House was originally intended to have a very low ratio of population to representation. Had that ratio been maintained, gerrymandering would be almost impossible, and every neighborhood would have a fair shot at electing someone from their social and/or ethnic group. It would also raise the cost of buying Congress.
Here is the link to his 2012 predictions:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/fivethirtyeights-20...;
Just click on the Senate forecast.