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Three Months of Britain's e-Petition System
eldavojohn writes "The idea seems simple. Provide feedback for your government via the internet. If enough people sign a petition, address it. That was the idea when an e-Petition site was launched in Nov 06 for Prime Minister Tony Blair. The BBC is reporting on the million or so petitions that the PM has received since the site went live. While most petitions are rejected or ignored, they have a top ten with one petition having 600,000 signers. Is this a valid way to provide feedback to the government or merely an exercise in keeping the populace happy?"
I'm from the UK and live in Australia, which is somewhere between the US and the UK in this respect.
The problem with "real democracy" is that there are a lot of ignorant people.
For instance, Toowoomba in Queensland (QLD) which is under severe drought recently had a vote on whether to start using recycled water for drinking water, like most modern cities outside of Australia. The vote ended up being "no". The leader of the no campaign's main argument seemed to be that people will call the town "Poowoomba". The vote was held regardless of the fact that there was no other viable option anyway.
The "wise man in parliament", QLD premier Peter Beattie, has now basically said "tough luck. There is no choice. Water is going to be recycled."
The problem now is that will there be enough water in time.
I am in no way anti-democracy and will defend ignorant people having their say. However, sometimes my jaw literally drops at the ignorance of a lot of voters (and the administrators for that matter). Surely there has to be some kind of happy medium?