Chinese Legislature Conducts Large Online Vote

hackingbear writes "In a bid to reform the tax law and raise person tax exemption to 3000 Yuan per month (or about US$5000 per year,) from 2000 Yuan per month, the Chinese legislature has conducted a massive online vote on the pending legislation. The [National People's Congress] Standing Committee, China's top legislature, on Wednesday publicized suggestions and opinions on amending the Law on Individual Income Tax that were submitted online from April 25 to May 31. Among all 82,707 citizens who commented on the proposal, [only] 15 percent of them favored raising the exemption to 3,000 yuan. However, 48 percent suggested to further raise the exemption to 5,000 yuan per month. While the online votes are not binding, the outcome likely shape the final bill. We'd hope the US Congress would dare to collect real citizen input on its legislation, rather than just doing lip service or useless political arguments."

Comments

What a concept!

[msobkow]

Actually making use of technology to drive government.

I believe the only way a true democracy can be run is if individual citizens are allowed to vote on legislation proposed by their representatives, rather than having the representatives do the voting. It would encourage the reps to actually engage their voting populations, otherwise their legislation dies.

Power to the people!

Re:What a concept!

[dragonturtle69]

Some context about Prop. 13's start, IIRC, your property value was not necessarily assessed fairly, and you could be taxed out of your home, the home that you actually owned the deed to. Wikipedia lines up decently, Prop 13 .

Like many of the silly things in CA, Prop 13 happened as a reaction to an abuse of power, which of course led to new abuses.