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Online Poll-Based Party Seeks Election Win
schliz writes "Online poll-based political party Senator Online is looking for senate candidates to contest the next Australian Federal Election. The party does not have any policies or an official stance, and promises to conduct online votes on major issues and act in Parliament accordingly. It has already appointed its candidate for the state of New South Wales through an online recruitment campaign in which candidates had to receive a minimum of 100 endorsements — either via its website or Facebook 'fans' — and raise a minimum of $200. This will be Senator Online's second Federal Election. When it contested in 2007, it received between 0.05 and 0.09 percent of each state's votes."
I'd vote for 'em.
Living With a Nerd
The party does not have any policies or an official stance, and promises to conduct online votes on major issues and act in Parliament accordingly.
Ok, so we suddenly now have a way to make really reliable online polls? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust a party with no real platform and outsourcing all policy decisions to whoever has the best poll-spamming software.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I like the idea in theory. Majority wins and not just the vocal (or rich) minority. However, how susceptible to fraud is this system going to be? Find an exploit in the code of the poll and run your opponents into the ground? Errors, glitches, server downtime, etc, etc, etc. I'm not saying any one of those problems is unique to this style of voting, but it does seem to be an easier target.
Sounds like Australia is well on their way to repealing the Second and Third laws of Thermodynamics, as they have proven to be unpopular in similar online electoral systems. I guess that's one way to get what you want.
If this party comes to power, how long do you reckon it will take for the whole country to have it's name changed to "Stephen Colberia"?
Do we need any more?
And this direct democracy stuff is overrated. Most people tout it as they think it inevitably leads to progressive outcomes until the proles vote against gay marriage.
The people are patriotic and have nothing to hide so they would vote away most of their rights and vote for free ponies if we let them.
I think this party is that idea taken to the extreme.
We do not need more democracy. We are already getting the government we deserve. This would only make it worse.
My logic is flawless.
There are three revolutionary parties without policies or stance I would love to see:
- Poll party (every issue is polled and thus as democratic as possible)
- Scientific party (every issue is decided on basis of facts alone, weighing only measurable pro's and cons)
- Neutral party (every issue is decided on election day, taking the stance of other parties based in votes total for each issue. This works as an equalizer, only taking the best of all parties. NOTE: this only works if there are a lot more than 2 parties!)
Great to see someone creating an advance in democracy! Although I must note the first one is most susceptible to the whims of the crowds, which can sway easily with some (im)proper media coverage... So that would be my least favorite of 3.
Well, still, one down and two more to go!!!
Obviously there are some pragmatic issues (making sure the whole thing isn't gamed by one bot voting a million times), but it is an interesting attempt at allowing people to have a truely populist option for their representation.
In the past, true populism was very tough to come by...it was easy for an elected official to become 'out of touch'. However now, a more perfect representation of the views of the moment of people can be had, thanks to technology.
Of course, the other question is, is that even a good thing. Populism isn't always right. Slavery in the US was popular, it took Lincoln's strong leadership to move away from it. Many wars are unpopular, but some of them may be necessary (conversely, some wars may be popular but unnecessary, see US/Iraq Gulf War II).
4chan is going to love this.
...till someone hacks one of their polls and a half-million votes appear for puppy meat as the national food. I only see this ending well.
Reminds me of the Dutch party TON (Trots op Nederland / Proud of The Netherlands). They tried to write the official election program on a public wiki. That was a disaster! All I can remember was "free toothpaste for everyone". Asking the general public for an opinion on everything is nice, but they should be able to make an informed decision.
It's a dangerous idea to let a majority of voters decide things. Think about the Civil Rights Act in the US. If it had been based on direct polling of the public, it never would have passed. The whole point of a representative democracy is that the guys elected (or appointed) to the legislature should, in theory, be wise enough to occasionally act against the wishes of the majority of the public, even if this costs future elections. Doing the "right" thing isn't always doing the popular thing.
It's also the case that you don't always want a simple majority deciding issues. All you would need is a bloc of 51% of the polled members always agreeing to vote the same way. That's how political parties came about in the first place. Even though the other 49% represent almost the same number of people, their voices would be ignored in favor of a slightly larger group.
This type of "Party" might work for a few seats, but I doubt the general public of any nation is sufficiently informed (or intelligent) to decide on general legislation. It also opens the door to allowing small minorities (ethnic, religious, etc) to be completely ignored in favor of larger minorities or majorities (consider the case of Port Chester, NY). Perhaps not such a big problem in Australia but something to consider for direct democracies of all types. They only tend to work in places with very homogeneous groups of people (homogeneous ethnically, religiously, and economically).
i've been thinking a lot about virtual democracy, and how it would be superior to our status quo of "elect a liar, send him to the capital to vote for whichever corporation pays him the most money instead of his constituent's interests" bullshit that is the biggest problem with corruption and democracy
transitioning to virtual democracy is obviously a problem, but this is a brilliant political hack because it basically force inserts virtual democracy into our status quo political system. huzzah! great idea guys ;-)
however, i have three complaints with virtual democracy. i still think the idea of virtual democracy is superior to elect-the-asshole-with-the-most-corporate-dollars that we currently live under, however, these complaints are real and need to be addressed:
1. fraud. how the hell do you prevent people from outside your constituency from voting? how do you make sure they vote only once? how do you prevent outright vote tampering, spoofing, etc. we have serious technological security problems here
2. apathy. a benefit of sending a representative to government rather than individuals voting all the time is that its tiresome. none of us have the time to familiarize ourselves with every issue and vote constantly, we have lives to lead. additionally, for emotionally contentious issues, you are going to have passionate minorities voting and the apathetic majority not voting. so the minority decides issues, and then the majority wakes up the next morning and goes "what happened?" example, gay rights: the social conservatives will come out in force and drown out the gay votes, and even though the majority is in favor of gay rights, they simply won't get off their asses and do the right thing and vote for what is right because their own selfish interests are not immediately and obviously threatened. again, a problem, not a fatal one, but a real problem with virtual democracy
3. corruption always finds a way. in the philippines it is a sort of joke that 200 peso notes become scarce around election times, because of all the outright vote buying that goes on. the philippines has a lot of poverty, so this doesn't happen in countries where the middle class dominates, but the way deregulation and whittle down the government libertarian morons are in vogue, we are destroying the middle class, and we'll be with the philippines soon enough (oh, libertarians, you didn't know your ideology meant a sea of poor and a few ultrarich and the destruction of the middle class?). people are unfortunately so damn apathetic and pessimistic and mindlessly negative in general, even about stuff that obviously matters to them, that in a virtual democracy, they would happily whore their votes out for a few bucks. so we will always have to fight corruption, virtual democracy won't do away with it, just move it around
i'm just sick of electing the asshole with the most corporate dollars, like we currently live under, and i happily embrace any corruption negatives in a virtual democracy system, as long as we get away from the outright prostitution for greed and ignoring of constituents that currently goes on at the legislative level
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I would vote for them too. But not hoping some immediate revolution would take place. It's hard to implement and would have backlash from the establishment, claiming something is illegal, irregular, etc. Having the candidate fully represent his online-bosses (thats what constituents should be!) will become a practical and technical challenge. To really represent what the poll-participants said, he would have to also change his mind when they do, adopt positions setup and give speeches written by them, see how to give interviews, participate in debates, etc. The mass of represented voters would have to be organized. Their organization would need to have some sort of structure, or have it be the no-structure-officialized, mass-rule-is-an-organized-structure. Abuse of power, or infighting, will follow, because it is so common in society. In the end, the only real path to a better society and government is education, reducing the average level of ignorance. .
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Scientific Party doesn't make sense. You can't make decisions on facts alone; goals and desires are always part of it, and that's what makes a decision political. Name any issue of any type, where a political decision can be made based on facts alone. There aren't any.
The very idea behind Senator Online is absurd and potentially dangerous for this reason: it is democratic. It supposes a government ought to do whatever the people want. We are so used to hearing "democratic" being used as synonymous with "something related to political theory and a good idea as well" that we forget it is merely majority tyrrany, two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. The popular mob acts, uninformed, with caprice and malice, and forever seeks to loot with support of the government the other mobs unlucky enough to find themselves in the minority. Republicanism (the kind written with a lowercase 'r' when it is not first in a sentence) is the only just philosophy of government. We elect members from a more-or-less dedicated political class whose job it is to know the constitution and keep current with events and facts so that they may legislate, we hope, justly and in an informed way. We also space these elections out by several years so that, hopefully, those politicians can be judged not by whether they did what the rabble demanded of them, but by the results of their actions. Anyone who disagrees with me does himself well to read a history of Athens.
Should be from the "no good can come from this" department.
Corruption in government is as normal, regular, and endless as the spinning of the earth. It's been that way since the dawn of centralized power, and it will be that way as long as government exists. I suggest you get used to it, because there is no solution. If there was, surely it would have been found by now.
Thousands of years have passed since the concept of government "by the people" was first put to test, and those thousands of years have converged on the same end result: corruption.
I know you're a dreamer, but it's time to face the cold hard truth of reality: government is corrupt and will always be corrupt, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I sure hope you're not still barking up the apathy tree when you're 80 years old, but then again I wouldn't be surprised. If you can find it in you, consider that corruption always comes from within, not from external forces (otherwise it would be coercion and not corruption).
I can't understand how anybody can believe electing an individual that votes for the highest contributer is better than citizens deciding what the country's government should be doing.
Also, to those who say "how do you stop tampering" stop spreading FUD. If you really want, you can handle it the same way elections are handled using paper.
1) Go down to polling station, prove you are so-and-so.
2) Go to booth, instead of mark X, you clicky buttons on computer terminal.
3) Congrats you have voted.
This way, only polling stations have computers connected to vote. You secure access to the physical terminals, no tampering, yay!
This is called superdemocracy. And it's not a very good form of democracy. Although reality may differ, politicians are elected to be in positions to make informed decisions about potential legislation, and protect the minority from being screwed by the majority. In other words, decmocracy as we have in the US is designed to allow the people making the decisions be in positions to receive and comprehend relevant information, evidence and expert testimony (and lobbying) before making such decisions. I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the population was [theoretically] as informed as these politicians are [supposed to be]. The whole reason to elect politicians is so that the masses can promote people they trust to make such decisions. If you think politicians are stupid, look at the vast majority of people who elected them.
Superdemocracy is also remarkably bad at protecting minorities from being screwed by majorities. It only takes 51% of the population to believe that deporting Mexicans without due process is okay, and then it's the law. There's no filtering in a super-democracy.
And on top of that, how is such an online-voting system supposed to handle matters that are considered secret to the country. Again, this is where people elected politicians they trust, who will be granted access to such sensitive information and make such decisions. How are military decisions supposed to be made when we have to wait for the internet polling period to end?
* I hardly ever agree with the majority. So voting for a party that promises to fulfill the will of the majority would be voting against my own interests.
* Democracy is very important, but it's not everything. Some things are more important than democracy: equality; human rights; personal liberties; access to food, water, housing, health care for all; etc. I will not vote for a party that refuses to have a stance on those fundamental political questions.
* Basing political decisions on online polls alone will widen the digital gap and further disenfranchise the offline population.
* The mere fact that they use Facebook for online polls is a reason to boycott them. Using Facebook _is_ a political stance.