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A lot of years ago I worked as an aide to a United States senator. It came as some surprise to realize what awesome power that title held. As an aide I could phone directly to the top general in the Army, Navy, etc. and get him on the phone. I could, on the strength of one query to the head of the Department of Social Security, find and locate papers that had been lost to a citizen of this country for more than a year. My job was an eye-opener that has made me a better and more aware citizen. If everyone had the opportunity to see and learn what I did about the inner workings of our elected officials — how they make decisions, use their powers and whom they really rely on to do their jobs — we would all become not merely cynics but voices in our local, state and federal politics.

My experience in the highest reaches of government taught me that voters have the power to move our leaders.

But citizens must use it wisely. That means voting intelligently and rationally.

As for our elected officials, the term "leader" rarely fits the people we elect. Most of them are led by what they believe will "lead" to their re-election rather than leading in the real sense of creating new ideas and putting themselves in the forefront of a charge to make our systems work better for the people.

Our goal should be to elect people who can do the job as it should be done. We need an active and informed electorate to accomplish that. The people who act as the top aides to our elected officials are invisible to the voters. Yet it is these people who hold sway over our congressmen and senators. The elected officials rely on these aides for information and direction, to write speeches, dream up policy and tutor our elected officials to make them look and sound as if they know something, which a lot of them don't.

Politics start at the local level and then go global. Whenever we have local or state elections, it shocks me that people use personalities and handshakes rather than real information to make their choices. Too many don't even bother to go out to vote.

Once upon a time the voters in my neighborhood had a turnout that would have made our founding fathers proud. No more, though. Now only a few diehards show up at the polls.

What's happening here? This is an educated, upscale area, where people should know better — if only to protect their vested interests, their property values.

But their absence at the polls tells me: No. 1, they don't read their local paper or do the kind of research needed to know who the people are that are running for office. No. 2, they don't care about their community; they believe they are untouchable by special interests.

Joining a country club and being a member of a social set based in the same community is not the same as getting involved enough to make an educated vote for your elected officials.

We complain that our immigrant population doesn't really want to be American citizens. Yet the people doing this complaining are willing to give up their birthright rather than move themselves to vote intelligently.

There are too many senators and congressmen who have spent a lifetime getting re-elected. Do we really want to live under a system of family dynasties?

We need to elect fresh blood with new ideas. We need to uproot corruption that comes of too many terms in office.

Lord Acton, the British statesman, said it all: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

This is true on every level of elected government: local, state and federal. Our democracy can only survive if the voters exercise their votes and make their voices heard.