Real Democracy; Using Technology

[Stunt]

We've seen it time and time again; politicians in the business of getting votes and sucking up to corporate donors. Democrats and Republicans for the most part have the same donors and huge amounts of money is spent on partisan debate and blurring the issues through smear campaigns. All of this effort to get the percieved less shady man in power and rule every aspect of your life; education funding, taxes, access to services, etc.

What I propose is eliminate all powerful elected positions in government and have the masses vote on all issues (social, international, fiscal) every half year or month. This would give people a say instead of being a conservative in illinois or a democrat in california with crappy choices. There is no way to match a politican to all of your individual views; so let people step back and vote on an issue by issue basis. Far less partisan and more democratic.

Also, the system could be configured to stop people from unrealistic choices. For example ranking funding for different areas of government from a 1 to 5. With all government spending having a direct impact on their tax rate (assuming a balanced budget). But also allowing for an option where you can allow a deficit but understand this increases your tax rate sometime down the road living or dead (estate tax). This way we eliminate the concept of politicians spending and giving tax cuts together. The average of the votes would direct the money to programs, tax cuts, military, etc.

What do you think of this idea?

 

[Nomar]

I don't think that would give enough time for politicians to accomplish anything, not to mention most people don't vote. What makes you think they're going to vote four times as much now?

 

[Nomar]

Originally posted by: Nomar
I don't think that would give enough time for politicians to accomplish anything, not to mention most people don't vote. What makes you think they're going to vote four times as much now?

What the ******... I am Tab.... Not Nomar...

 

[Tab]

Test

 

[Stunt]

There would be no politicians; people would be voting on all major issues.
People would vote knowing they have a direct impact on their taxes, programs. Today nobody votes because the system doesn't give them a say and Democrats are similar to Republicans. They are turned off from the partisan bickering.
Most people are usually interested in policical issues; just not the partisan debate.

Imagine if ppl could decide to pull out of Iraq or not.

 

[Martin]

People don't vote because they're lazy and really don't care and don't understand anything relating to politics. They're also very easily influenced and prone to fads and group-think, which is how lobbyists will still get their way. Instead of paying off a few congressmen, they'll pay some preachers or any other social leaders to organize their followers.

What I'm really getting is that technology will not correct human flaws.

 

[yllus]

Trying to brainstorm negatives to this for the sake of discussion:

1) There's this certain flaw in democracy in that the masses are often too dumb to pick positions on issues; or once picked, stick with them appropriately. Hence sometimes it's better that the masses vote for a representative who can, after taking a general direction from his electorate, make decisions for the masses instead of a straight up mirroring of their views.

2) The masses will vote in accordance to their local wants and needs. Albertans will vote differently than Quebecers on some issues, for instance. Representatives who remove the direct effects of democracy are useful in looking past local concerns and can better make decisions for the whole of the country, which is sometimes necessary.

 

[Rainsford]

I don't think that's a good idea...we'd end up with even larger government than we have right now. I know it seems like we wouldn't because people would have more control over their own tax dollars, but come on, most people are terrible at managing their money, they think they can have it all and not have to pay for it...we'd end up with an even worse situation than we have now. Only instead of people that just might have some idea of what they are doing, we'd have people who, by definition, don't know what they are talking about 99% of the time. The problem with direct democracy (and indirect for that matter, but less so) is that it assumes collective ignorance has some value...that the sum of a bunch of zeroes is a positive number. And with more involvement, this would be a problem with EVERY issue out there.

As Churchill so famously said, the problem with democracy is best summed up by a 5 minute conversation with the average voter. The average person is totally unqualified to be making decisions about how to run the country, that's why representative democracy is the best bet...people are a lot more likely to be able to pick someone who knows something than to be able to make good decisions themselves. I'm not suggesting that our system is perfect either, but direct democracy is 9 forklift operators and 1 aeronautical engineer voting on how to build a rocket.

 

[imported_Lothar]

Originally posted by: Stunt
We've seen it time and time again; politicians in the business of getting votes and sucking up to corporate donors. Democrats and Republicans for the most part have the same donors and huge amounts of money is spent on partisan debate and blurring the issues through smear campaigns. All of this effort to get the percieved less shady man in power and rule every aspect of your life; education funding, taxes, access to services, etc.

What I propose is eliminate all powerful elected positions in government and have the masses vote on all issues (social, international, fiscal) every half year or month. This would give people a say instead of being a conservative in illinois or a democrat in california with crappy choices. There is no way to match a politican to all of your individual views; so let people step back and vote on an issue by issue basis. Far less partisan and more democratic.

Also, the system could be configured to stop people from unrealistic choices. For example ranking funding for different areas of government from a 1 to 5. With all government spending having a direct impact on their tax rate (assuming a balanced budget). But also allowing for an option where you can allow a deficit but understand this increases your tax rate sometime down the road living or dead (estate tax). This way we eliminate the concept of politicians spending and giving tax cuts together. The average of the votes would direct the money to programs, tax cuts, military, etc.

What do you think of this idea?

If you plan on using Deibold voting machines with your plan, it won't make a difference from what we have now.

Rainsford hit it to the point.
Having people who know nothing about issues voting won't solve it.

 

[Infohawk]

I'm a fan of direct democracy. The current system is outdated and assumes people can't communicate with each other quickly over long distances. We need to establish trustworthy e-voting, but it's not impossible. There's really no reason why people can't vote on individual laws these days. And the courts can strike down a law if it decides it's contradicting itself.

 

[kingtas]

Are you kidding. Have you seen Jay Leno go on the street and ask peopke questions that an adult with a high school education should know? It is pretty sad. It's bad enough that they are even allowed to vote for politicians let alone important issues.

 

[chcarnage]

Direct democracy is a good way to secure the influence of the people in less than 2 or 4 year periods. It is impossible to vote on every budget and law and there are many undisputed decisions in politics, too. However the combination of referenda and popular initiative grants that the spotlight is guided at the important issues.

In practice, once every 3 months the people recieve letters with the needed documents and statements of parliament/government and opposition/initiative comitee. The people then can vote by letter or at the urn.

Financial issues are often subject of votings. P.e. my city voted about an autobahn noise protection project in september and sporadically even crumbs like integration projects or school renovations are at stake. On the other end of the scale, in November the Swiss will vote about if they pay a whopping $788m to the poorest EU member states in the next five years (a decision that will with no doubt influence the Swiss-EU relationship).

There are a few downsides, too. The voter participation goes down (it usually is in the 40-50% range with occasional outliers on especially important or irrelevant issues). And the administrative costs are higher, naturally.

Technological progress is great and all, but when it's about democracy then safety should come first and after reading about the experiences the US and Germany made with vote machines, I'm glad my country is more on the conservative side there. As for the rating idea, I think it is too elusive to the voter. If both referendum and initiative are implemented, you can confront the voter with more comprehensible questions of whatever you want and influence budget priorities in this way. (e.g. "should the city invest X dollars in its public transport system?" or "should the nation buy warplanes for X dollars?")

Another argument against the grading with numbers from 1-5 is that the voter likes explicit answer possibilities (ever filled out a questionary with multiple pages full of number fields to tick? You might chose different numbers on the first questions after finishing). And yes/no is simple. The most complicated scheme possible here is:

[*]Law proposition of the initiative comitee y/n
[*]Counter proposition of the parliament y/n
[*]If both get >50% yes votes, which one should be chosen? initiative/parliament

I'm a regular counting assistant and I've seen votes on these simple questions that didn't make sense.

Originally posted by: kingtas
Are you kidding. Have you seen Jay Leno go on the street and ask peopke questions that an adult with a high school education should know? It is pretty sad. It's bad enough that they are even allowed to vote for politicians let alone important issues.

Partially this is a chicken-egg problem. Give the people responsability and they will inform themselves better.