Slashdot Mirror
Internet Based Political "Meta-Party" For Massachusetts
sophiachou writes "The Free Government Party, a non-profit, open source political 'meta-party' focused on providing citizens with more direct control of Congress through online polling and user-drafted bills, seems to be looking for a candidate to endorse for US Representative of Massachusetts' 8th Congressional District. If you're from the Boston area, you might have seen this already on Craigslist. The chosen candidate will be bound by contract to vote in Congress only as do his or her constituents online. However, they don't seem to be going for direct democracy. To make voting convenient, you can select advisers to cast your votes for you, unless you do so yourself. Supposedly, interviews for the candidate position are already underway. Anyone from MA's 8th Congressional District on Slashdot already apply?"
The way we were supposed to choose our president was to know and vote for our electors, who were supposed to be the wisest people we knew. Political parties kind of buggered up the plan.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is just what I've been waiting for!! I have my vote-bots standing by, ready to tilt the vote when the time comes.
Of course, I won't use them for just ANY occasion, I will save them for something important. Hmmmmm.....the invasion of Canada vote!!!! Prepare thyself, Oh Canada!!
Qxe4
And "Republic" doesn't seem to sound right either, when there is so much potential for this sort of system to take direct action. Is this right? Answer: Also "perhaps".
How about a "Liberacy"? (a) Maybe, but it evokes the wrong sort of popular pianist to appeal to everyone. YMMV. But I think we've blurred the boundaries so far it's really hard to use the original terms for this sort of political party.
But I think it's a great idea, myself.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Of course they aren't going for direct democracy. That is an organizational nightmare. Direct *Representation* is the model I have always advocated, and that is what they are doing. I should have a vote, and be able to give that vote to anyone that I feel is able to represent my views and interests best.
Think of what we would have done if we were following the opinions of people just here on slashdot:
The whole thing reminds me of a chess game, Kasparov VS the World, in which Kasparov played against anyone who willing to log in to MSN to vote. On one move, 2.5% of the people voted for a move that was completely ILLEGAL. In that particular game, the world did manage to play a good game, but arguably only because a few very good players managed to take charge and guide the hoards through it all. In general the message boards degenerated into a lot of flaming....
Qxe4
I can't remember my password, so screw Karma.
The pay for this job in MA is 31k.
Anyone intelligent at all is making 60k+.
Anyone unintelligent is making 40k at Mcdonalds if they actually fucking worked at it.
In other words: the pay doesn't just suck, a teenage dropout can make more.
I live in this district. I'd apply, and mean it, in a second if the job payed -anything- livable. 55k maybe.
For all of you who go "But 31k is fine in hickland" this is less than .01 miles from Boston! The cost of living here is crazy. I don't know anyone who can live on 31k a year, pay rent, own a car, and possibly even -dream- of owning a condo, let alone a house. 31k here means you live with roomates- forever. You do not get to support anyone. Ever. Feeding children? No way, that's just dreams.
The simple fact is, unless you are suicidal, 50+ (and so close to retiring you can afford the pay cut, because you already saved up your retirement fund and the pay is just icing), or so dumb you can't succeed at a damned mcdonalds.
Good people aren't cheap. And Reps are very cheap. Do you even wonder why reps are so easy to buy?
-They aren't paid to care about you, and never will be.-
Discloser: I am 25, and a software engineer.
Sounds almost like theyre just taking a select group , leverage whatever pressures and influence they have in a manner to get a puppet elected, and toss in yet another layer of representation to determine what the puppet does... almost like a broken socialist microcosm of a republic. But hey, whatever floats their boats... I just hope their vote server is solid...
Never disregard the raw power inherent to stupidity... they call it "dumb luck" for a reason...
A good representative is not someone who conducts polling every time something comes up. A good representative makes as sound an educated a decision as he or she can, weighing the good of ALL the people they represent against the good of the commonwealth, against the good of the planet...and more importantly, they should not make a career of it.
I don't see the voting populous having that kind of foresight. I'd be a happier if representation was randomly assigned amongst people.
Please help metamoderate.
Even if the election fairy manages to get this person in office, the existing system on the hill will surely keep him/her out of any and all comities until they do the bidding of the majority. Without being involved in special comities, it's a sure bet this person will be so isolated come next election they will be eaten alive.
excellent congressman AA+++++++++ would def vote for again
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
Perhaps I'm getting jaded as I get older, but the longer I'm around, the more I wonder how on earth democracy works at all... and how it's managed to stay around so long. I'm almost a skeptic, but it truly is the least worst option, at least so far, that we've been able to come up with. (I wouldn't mind being ruled by an all powerful benevolent AI, should one become available).
(To paraphrase Carlin) Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize 50% are DUMBER THAN THAT...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I happen to stumble upon something similar here : http://podvoters.org/
:)
PodVoters looks to me like a much better idea (IMO), because it's an online system for selecting candidates, according to a process that should yield much better candidates, than we get at present. It's not about users directly managing the entire legislative process which is too burdensome for most (any?) citizen.
just my two cents
Therez light! : aHR0cDovL3hrMGRlci53b3JkcHJlc3MuY29t
The way we were supposed to choose our president was to know and vote for our electors, who were supposed to be the wisest people we knew. Political parties kind of buggered up the plan.
Correction: Human nature kind of buggered up the plan. The fact that we have a kind of floating aristocracy, divided into a couple of camps depending on which segment of the wealthy and powerful aristocracy they get more support from, is entirely by design. Many of the framers didn't want the common people getting too much control over things for fear that we wouldn't choose to let them run things.
Thomas Paine was basically run out of town on a rail for being too much against the idea that the "smart people" should make all the decisions for us dumb rubes.
- (A)
...vote for our electors, who were supposed to be the wisest people we knew.
Sounds a lot like a monarchy: the elite nobility governing the unwashed ignorant masses.
Something that is increasingly forgotten is that the key innovation of the American revolution was to move away from trying to find the most superior person to govern and to instead rely on a system. Instead of having a (supposedly) superior king decide whose head to chop off, they had a system - of laws and judges and lawyers and juries.
The basic realization was that you're not ever going to find some guy who is just so special that he can make all the best decisions for the country. Instead, you need a system of specialists, experts and ordinary citizens working together collectively.
For example, in that view, the president is not supposed to make decisions himself (and certainly not based on his "gut") but, like a judge, he is supposed to preside over the system to insure that the system reaches the correct decisions.
Why not try it and see what happens? What could possibly go wrong? Seriously, this is definitely something worth persuing. Maybe some variation of it in the future will prove better than what we're doing now. I'm sure there were people who didn't believe American democracy would work when our forefathers started this country.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Sounds a lot like a monarchy
Nope, it sounds like a committee. The electors were supposed to be performing an occasional, temporary public duty, like serving on a jury.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I live in this district, and must say that as much as I love this idea, it would be tough to sway me (as a social libertarian and economic moderate) to vote out Capuano. His voting record is very consistently exactly in line with what I would want.
To whit, the ACLU ranks him at 94% voting the way they advocate and 100% by LBGT advocates (I'm also gay). He's in favor of affirmative action, which I have some minor objections to, but generally think isn't particularly evil. He voted against expanding criminal prosecutions for minors and is rated "soft on crime" (which I approve of, having been harassed by the police and FBI several times despite having committed no crimes). He is generally not in favor of the war on drugs. I don't think he's as savvy on energy and the environment as I'd like, but he probably is better informed that an average group of citizens...
I dunno, I'm not sure I'd trust my neighbors in general to be as sensible as Capuano has been. I've seen my neighbors believe some pretty stupid crap. I'd have to see a very sensible plan before I'd vote to change.
...but it was started by two comedians, mostly as an elaborate joke I hink. They called it "The Political Party" and almost all the representatives were known Norwegian comedians. http://www.dpp.no/
I suspect that all the Founding Fathers have been spinning like bobbins on a sewing machine for some time now. A little more angular momentum wont make any difference at this point.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Where I come from, any contract binding an elected representative to vote in a certain manner would violate the constitution, and thus be invalid from the start. Once a person is elected into the office, he/she can vote however he/she sees fit, and nobody can influence the vote (except $$$ of course ;). Also, it doesn't matter WHY the person has been elected, whether there was an invalid "contract" in the play - the person becomes a legally elected representative for full 4 years.
You don't have to live in the district in order to run for Congress in that district, you only have to live in the state.
The folks running the Free Government Party might require a candidate to live in the district, but it isn't a restriction required by the United States or Massachusetts.
I was just thinking of a solution like this in the wake of the Telecoms debacle. What if some reasonably intelligent, semi organised group was to set up a shadow government of sorts, with its own structure to debate and vote on issues on a public website?
You could set it up like Slashdot, with the explicit goal of influencing government policy and officials to move in a suitable direction.
Such a group could have policies on health, education, technology, science, military, the whole gamut, all debated by people who know what they are talking about, with a moderation system like slashdot. Once the debate was finalised, you could hold a poll for the final direction of that piece of legislation or whatever, and set that as the policy for the year. The debate could perhaps be re-opened by popular demand as situations change.
And then you give it teeth. All members donate a hundred bucks a year to it (also a handy way to ensure that there are not too many duplicate accounts) for lobbying or funding the political group, and representatives are appointed to push the agenda on the hill. Its just the bare bones of an idea, it needs a hell of a lot of fleshing out, but damn me if I wouldn't set it up myself if I had the time.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Seriously though, I have to wonder if some people will vote for the issue/candidate with the shortest required reading. Or, we might start seeing stuff like this:
SEX! SEX! SEX!, vote yes on proposition 2600, SEX SEX SEX.
I see so many problems with this "direct voting". It's not even funny. Well, it's a little funny. SEX!
Why not have artificially intelligent avatars represent you?
You know what your overall objectives in voting are, but don't have time to pursue them on every single issue. You can't trust a human representative (who certainly has his own agenda) so you program an AI with parameters reflecting your personal preferences and it tries to emulate your vote on every issue that comes up, and if it comes across something it can't handle, alerts you so you can vote in person.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Many of the framers didn't want the common people getting too much control over things for fear that we wouldn't choose to let them run things.
One possible motive.
There may have also been a nod to the level of literacy in the general population. Remember, this was in the day where if you could do enough math to perform celestial navigation, you could be an officer in the navy.
Times have changed, the pool of smarter heads is bigger. You'll never eliminate the "dumb rubes", but you can gather useful input from a broader swath of people.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, those Framers may not have come off as so elitist in a modern context.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear