You're not alone if you wonder why Pennsylvania isn't taxing big energy for the privilege of profiting from our abundant natural gas deposits.

About two-thirds of Pennsylvanians favor a tax on gas drillers, and that support has been growing despite Gov. Tom Corbett's unyielding opposition.

A Franklin & Marshall College poll last August found 65 percent wanted to tax gas drillers to help balance the state budget, up from 62 percent last March. Separate polling by Muhlenberg College showed support growing from 53 percent in September 2010 to 71 percent last month.

But the Republican-led Legislature doesn't seem to be paying attention to us. It's also noteworthy how out of synch many of our representatives are on other issues. They aren't acting on broad public support for a tax on cigars and smokeless tobacco, for instance. Polls also show strong support for the sale of state liquor stores, but that doesn't get done.

The reasons for the disconnect between what the public wants and what state government accomplishes could fill a book. Chapter 1 would be titled "Ideological Blinders."

But good government activist Tim Potts isn't so much interested in why lawmakers routinely thwart the public will as he is in how to make them cut it out.

Potts, of Carlisle, has come up with an idea to make opinion polling actually advance the public's agenda. He wants to do that by asking candidates to pledge to put the people's priorities ahead of their own, a nifty riposte to Grover Norquist's ideologically rigid no-new-taxes pledge.

Specifically, Potts' new political action committee, called The Majority Party PA, asks candidates for the Legislature to pledge to cast votes "that reflect the will of the majority of Pennsylvania citizens" as determined by scientific polling.

The Majority Party PA will inform voters about who has signed the pledge and who hasn't. It also will publish a report card comparing lawmakers' voting records to the polls.

Potts told me The Majority Party PA's agenda will reflect only policies that have been supported by a significant majority of Pennsylvanians as shown by multiple polls that meet national standards for accuracy and fairness.

"What we think as individuals working for The Majority Party PA doesn't matter," says the PAC's website, the majoritypartyPA.com. "The only thing that matters is what the majority of our fellow citizens think."

Potts offered one crucial exception. He said The Majority Party won't touch polls addressing human, religious or civil rights. Our inalienable rights, he notes, must not bow to the tyranny of the majority.

But polling on quotidian matters — from taxation to public safety to education — is fair game.

My knee-jerk reaction to Potts' idea was: (1) the majority is sometimes wrong; and (2) leaders shouldn't let polls be a substitute for thinking.

On further reflection, however, I can't deny that lawmakers pledging an oath to "the will of the majority" is a big improvement over lawmakers taking orders from fat-cat contributors.

Put me down as undecided, but definitely intrigued.

jhawkes@lnpnews.com