LETTERS.

To the Editor:

The July issue of State Legislatures supposedly focused on "Legislatures of the Future," but struck me as mostly a defense of the status quo.

The main articles defended the legislative process as inherently superior to the direct democracy that the public is increasingly demanding.

The authors suggested that legislatures "co-opt direct democracy" by building better Web sites and by "educating the public" about the virtues of representative government. But the authors never looked at structural flaws in the legislative process, the very flaws that are driving the public's discontent with legislatures.

Perhaps the biggest flaw is the way legislatures handle conflict. At a recent Council of State Governments conference, I spoke on that subject: "How state legislatures can better resolve their disputes." The...