[Monroe13]

This assumes that Congress accomplishes anything in "meetings".

Legislation is created and negotiated behind the scenes usually by a small number of lead sponsors who then build a political coalition of support before the bill ever gets to a Committee hearing. Many(most?) committee hearings are perfunctory nonsense attended by just a handful of members and the vote count is an open secret beforehand.

I agree that Congress should explore online voting, but I don't know that the ultimate equilibrium would look that different than what we see today. The typical Member spends Monday to Thursday in DC, Thursday evening to Sunday + August recess + multiple weeklong recesses in district or on the road.

If online voting was adopted, smart Members would still strike a balance between spending time in DC building relationships with their colleagues (and raising money) and campaigning back in the district.

[elihu]

My impression is that we have committees for introducing legislation because congress can only debate so much legislation in the time they have. If any representative could introduce and vote on any legislation, most of it wouldn't go anywhere because the support wouldn't be there. However, congress could have many bills in-progress at any time and no bill would be blocking any other for bureaucratic reasons, or because some committee was stacked with people who hate that bill.

Perhaps committees are an outdated idea, that when you get down to it they're only a roadblock to getting stuff done and an impediment to democracy. (We can still have committees for hearings, and things like that. That's fine.)