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Australians Running On-Line Poll Based Senators
exeme writes "The 2007 Australian election was recently announced and a new completely on-line based political party is running for election to the Australian Senate. Senator On-Line will give Australian residents eligible to vote a chance to vote in on-line polls for every piece of legislation that comes to the Senate. The senator will then blindly vote in accordance with the majority.
The party has no position on anything until it is voted on and has been approved by the Australian Electoral Commission as a legitimate party. The party will be running two candidates in each Australian state." I imagine this could have a huge impact on CowboyNeal related legislation down under.
So will the missing option meme suddenly create a massive influx of amendments onto the Australian Senate floor?
But in all - this seems to be the next step in democracy.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Australia:
Rest of capitalist, democratic world:
Perhaps a bit of a cynical view?
Democracy doesn't work. We've had them for thousands of years, and they always fail as the majority learns they can just vote to steal from the minority. Superdemocracy is even worse.
The United States Beta that was started in the late 1700's had a great idea: let there be a pseudo-democracy at the Federal level, but limit is greatly. Don't let there be an easy way for the majority to steal from the minority. It worked for a while, until the People slowly upset the restrictions provided for in the Constitution. It was a sad day when Lincoln was elected, the first tyrant of many.
The idea of voting en masse online sounds like a good idea. I recall that MajorBBS founder, the late Tim Stryker (a man I knew personally) was a big proponent of a Superdemocracy. Back then I agreed with him, until I started to realize that the failings of a nation/society generally happen because the People want more without giving more.
My own political thought is what I call a Unanimocracy: a law doesn't get passed without unanimous consent. If you can't get it at the National level, try at the State level. Keep going down the ladder of size until you might end up with a law passed only in a home, or even only by an individual who restricts themselves. Sure, it's a grandious idea, but I feel it is the only fair way to set legislation. The Internet is a great Unanimocracy, with individuals deciding what limitations they'll accept, and others forming relationships based on agreeing to those limitation. You could say that the dreaded click-contracts are similar, although they're covered by "laws" rather that voluntary contracts that can be broken by either party.
The only way I'd accept a Democracy of any kind is if there was an agreement that 10% of any voting bloc can veto any legislation they disagree with. Let 50.1% say "We want to tax tall black men to pay for education of short asian women." Let the legislation be unless 10% of the population votes VETO. That's three ways to vote: Yes, I want it. No, but I don't really care. Veto, this is bad. A 10% veto requirement would get me to support government again, because the minority has power to stop a crazy, and theft-prone, majority.
Hmm, if they'd say no ILLEGAL imigrants, instead of no darkies, I'd move there. Oh, and anyone who comes first, then asks to stay is illegal. Apply first, then you're accepted, and we're golden.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Poppycock. They feared those who didn't own land, because their interests were not their own. Don't hide your elitism in lame, unsupported platitudes.
In case you haven't noticed, the editorial influence of slashdot isn't exactly something to brag about. Digg fails because the only people who select stories are those whose time is the last valuable. If there were an incentive system to make it worth ones while, you'd find a higher quality of moderators.
America fails because the only people with direct access to the government are those with money to throw around. The system is already gamed by special interests, but a direct vote would make it extremely difficult for special interests to exert undue weight. For every interest group that swarms the polls, its opponents would do so also.
That has some interesting implications for the moral authority of democracies. People living in a democracy usually see themselves as 1) able to take part in shaping the laws of that, and 2) submitting their own desires to the judgement of the majority will (e.g. 'I wish to buy sex but the majority has decided this is wrong, hence I submit my desires to their judgement').
With regards to number one, this means it's evident that regardless of your will and thoughts, they are never going to be represented regardless of how many share them, due to the aforementioned "enlightened elite" that you posit the existence of (by definition they must exist, as you say direct polls would let the evil mob take over). It should mean that for a large number of people trying to even act within the political system or gather public support for their views is plainly meaningless, as they will be considered evil and every method employed against them by aforementioned enlighteneds regardless of how widely their opinions are held.
With regards to number 2, it means that democracies do not have the moral authority to demand submission on behalf of their people - because they by definition do not represent the will of the people (your own definition), they only represent the view of a minority. Submitting yourself to democractic laws is thus simply a matter of fitting into the world view of a minority that they enforce with punishments and rewards contrary to the majority view. The equivalent to this would be adhering to the rules of a dictatorship that you disagree with but argues strongly for their benevolence.
Is there anything I have written here that are not logical neccessities and guaranteed outcomes of what you have said? I am genuinely curious.
Some thoughts:
... uh ... better than the other guy who wants to do the same thing. Umm ... I'll do it naked!"
a) Homogenization of the vote? Any other senator would be wise, in the absence of strong constituency lobbying, to simply vote with the Senator Online. How could you go wrong if the Online vote is a reflection of the public desire?
b) What is the likely demographic of those who would use Senator Online? The hard working middle-class type isn't likely to want the added burden of being a defacto senator added to the existing job, parenting, soccer mom'ing, etc. Maybe the Senator Online would reflect the will of those with time to spare eg. retirees, welfare abusers, other politcal candidates with an agenda to push, Slashdotters wanting to comment on something different?
c) What platform would a Senator Online candidate use? Great to be a candidate if all you do is vote as told. Who could find fault with your performance? A job for life if you could get it. But what's your election platform? "Vote for me. I'll do exactly what you want
Doesn't this almost seem like Tom Sawyer? Get someone else to do the work (assume researchers/collaters are hired), get someone else to take responsibility (the online voters) but you take the perks (and pay). Does this seem like a scam to anyone else?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
As you allude to indirectly, most people simply don't have time to make fully informed decisions on most issues. If a direct democracy system did become widespread, I would expect to see a "free market" of organizations that would issue a series of "vote recommendations". That is, a particular constituent would sign up with an organization that matched his/her preferences and then that organization would vote on his/her behalf.
And billions of flies eat sh...
Just because everyone does it doesn't make it right. The reverse conclusion is equally valid, btw.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The American Ideal. ...or...
more to your point.
they're only running for the Senate, our house of review. So they won't be proposing any bills
Your Senate never writes any new laws? That's fantastic! If only our Senate worked that way. Also our House of Representatives.
We'd still let them vote to repeal old laws, though. And if they're good, then once the US Code fits into a single bound volume again we might let them vote to replace old laws with new ones.
One major problem I see with this idea is that it will be jacked by special interest groups, a known political economy problem. To explain:
Say legislation on how to regulate the steel industries was proposed. Now most of the country couldn't care less about what form this would take and so wouldn't vote. However the steel industry itself is very interested and they would all vote to shoot it down. End result: no regulation of the steel industry because they are the only ones who care enough about the issue to inform themselves of the legislation and actually vote, even though the vast majority of people would like some form of regulation.
Australia would end up with the problem of the US voting system, only half the people actually vote so all you end up needing is a quarter of the population to take a strong interest and you win.
Plus, how many people have time to follow every piece of legislation that comes up in parliament?
Everything you said applies just as much to voting for a representative as it does voting on individual issues. Can I think of many ways direct Democracy would fail? Sure. But in most every case, representative Democracy is already failing the same way. Vote buying? Check. Uninformed ballots cast? Check. Pork? Double-check!
I read a good article on this just today; a major point of the article is that any country that is drowning in media cannot get the best people to run for office because the best people all have skeletons in their closets.
Marx didn't think humans particularly good OR bad. Oddly enough, his ideas about human "goodness" in this respect were roughly the same as Plato's and we all know how political ideologies based on The Republic have played out.
Is there a system within the law whereby a politician could make a promise and *ask* to be bound to that promise, by law? It's not really contract law, as the votes are anonymous, so that'd be hard to prove. It's not really a false-advertising law, as you're not selling a product or service (at least not in the traditional sense.) What does that leave? A contract with yourself? Seems like a problem we should have solved earlier, given the system of governance in use. But then we always assumed that:
a) we'd impeach them if they did something *really* bad
b) we'd fail to re-elect them if they didn't do enough good
c) representatives are expected to read up and become experts on issues, sometimes secret issues, and make decisions on our behalf, given the data they have, not given the data we have.
Under those circumstances, I guess it didn't make sense to find a way to legally bind them to do as we say?
The solution isn't to condemn direct democracy. It's to have a written constitution that makes certain issues off-limits, like the Bill of Rights, and make it more difficult to amend the constitution than to pass an average law. You can still put the voting power directly in the people's hands - just require 2/3 or 3/4 instead of a simple majority for extreme cases.
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The problem with this type of electronic voting is that it will not be representative of the whole community, and will only represent a small percentage of those eligible to vote. Compulsory voting in Australian means that the government has to go out of it's way to ensure that everyone who is legally required to vote can readily do so ie. elections on a Saturday, numerous voting booths, simple clear cut manual voting, clear multi lingual instructions etc.
In this case, it specifically excludes all citizens who are not connected to the Internet, or are aware of a current vote, from participating. To be viable, a broadband Internet connection would have to be considered an essential utility, not only for the voting but also for the delivery of the information required by the citizen in order to be able to make, or a least try to make, a carefully considered judgement.
Of course geeks and nerds would end up dominating the vote, a more privacy invasive (googlites), bunch of control freaks (microsofties), you could not imagine, perhaps not such a good idea, without the Internet as an essential universal utility, after all.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen