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."

Comments

brilliant political hack

[circletimessquare]

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

Re:brilliant political hack

[$lashdot]

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

Well, "gay rights" encompasses a lot of things. When this gets narrowed down to just one issue, say for example, "gay marriage," you might find that the majority does not agree with you. For example, an article today about Hawaii's governor vetoing "gay civil unions," while it sort of supports your point about politicians being in the way, also reports, "Nationwide, voters have consistently rejected same-sex marriage. Five states -- Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, through judicial or legislative actions."(See, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100707/pl_nm/us_hawaii_gaymarriage )

So, in a state where the population has voted against gay marriage, but the judiciary has permitted it, is it the majority or the minority who is establishing the law over the objections of the other? How would the virtual representative have voted? I don't think that the "majority" is always as "progressive" as people imagine.

Good idea, but has some limits

[h00manist]

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. .