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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."
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.
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"?
Ahh, good ole' democracy, where 51% votes to oppress the other 49%. That's justice and liberty for all!
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/
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.
At least it's not the US because it needs at least 66% of both houses to even PROPOSE an admendment.
From http://www.usconstitution.net/constam.html:
There are essentially two ways spelled out in the Constitution for how to propose an amendment. One has never been used.
The first method is for a bill to pass both houses of the legislature, by a two-thirds majority in each. Once the bill has passed both houses, it goes on to the states. This is the route taken by all current amendments. Because of some long outstanding amendments, such as the 27th, Congress will normally put a time limit (typically seven years) for the bill to be approved as an amendment (for example, see the 21st and 22nd).
The second method prescribed is for a Constitutional Convention to be called by two-thirds of the legislatures of the States, and for that Convention to propose one or more amendments. These amendments are then sent to the states to be approved by three-fourths of the legislatures or conventions. This route has never been taken, and there is discussion in political science circles about just how such a convention would be convened, and what kind of changes it would bring about.
Regardless of which of the two proposal routes is taken, the amendment must be ratified, or approved, by three-fourths of states. There are two ways to do this, too. The text of the amendment may specify whether the bill must be passed by the state legislatures or by a state convention. See the Ratification Convention Page for a discussion of the make up of a convention. Amendments are sent to the legislatures of the states by default. Only one amendment, the 21st, specified a convention. In any case, passage by the legislature or convention is by simple majority.
The Constitution, then, spells out four paths for an amendment:
Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state conventions (never used)
Proposal by convention of states, ratification by state legislatures (never used)
Proposal by Congress, ratification by state conventions (used once)
Proposal by Congress, ratification by state legislatures (used all other times)
It is interesting to note that at no point does the President have a role in the formal amendment process (though he would be free to make his opinion known). He cannot veto an amendment proposal, nor a ratification. This point is clear in Article 5, and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v Virginia (3 US 378 [1798])
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Discrimination based on sex is wrong.
I'm not trolling but you've just demonstrated a problem with a "scientific" party. You can't prove that discrimination is wrong using the scientific method. You and I may not like discrimination for whatever reason, but there's nothing in science that allows you to say something is wrong in a moral sense.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.