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CS Professor Announces Run For VT State Senate On a Platform of Internet Polling
Cynic writes "Having read pretty heavily on the topic, weighed the pros and cons, and seen a few relevant slashdot articles, I wondered why an elected representative couldn't use online and in-person polling of constituents to decide the way he or she votes. Though we are living in the 'information age' and have rich communications media and opportunities for deep and accessible deliberation, we are getting by (poorly) with horse-and-buggy-era representation. In the spirit of science and because I think it's legitimately a better way of doing things, I recently announced my candidacy for Vermont's State Senate in Washington County."
How do you think such polling could be best accomplished? Do you think it's worth trying? Whether or not you buy into it, it's something that's only been made feasible in recent times with modern technology.
You'd have to set up the system so people can't vote multiple times. Otherwise they could have a bunch of bots automatically do thousands of votes to sway things however they wanted.
Need I say more
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Nothing like mob rule to really get some well-thought-out laws passed.
Maybe we can all vote on criminal trial verdicts too.
So the most effective hacker gets to determine the representative's positions?
"I wondered why an elected representative couldn't use...polling of constituents to decide the way he or she votes."
Because the electorate are stupid and ignorant, and malware will be developed to submit votes.
"In the spirit of science and because I think it's legitimately a better way of doing things'
If you really believe these things, then you should absolutely never hold any public office whatsoever.
Ignoring your constituency is very bad; doing exactly what they say is worse.
Leaving all the decisions up to popular vote makes for poor decision making because the general public (usually) are not as informed as the lawmakers. Like Henry Ford said, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Even if one disregards the technical hurdles, the very idea of government run strictly by polling is ill advised. Firstly, poll results are heavily influenced by the wording of the questions. This would essentially be handing over a great deal of influence to whoever gets to phrase the questions. Secondly, it is likely to encourage demagogy.
>> an elected representative (could use)...polling of constituents to decide the way he or she votes
We already have this. It's called..."polling", and it's a major function of entrenched political parties and their support groups.
Of course, the way the question is phrased has a lot to do with the outcome (remember opposition to the "dihydrogen oxide" plants?), so political support groups spend time crafting polling questions that help show that the majority is clearly with their team. (e.g., "Do you support the terrorists and my opponent, or apple pie and me?")
So, meh. Interesting proposal, but ridiculously naive.
Ugh, let's try this again with formatting. Note to self: preview exists for a reason. Here's how I see it. Feel free to add your own. It would be an interesting experiment, but I think the cons may outweigh the pros.
Pros:
-True democracy
-Actual representation of the constituents
-Ability to gauge public opinion on X almost instantly
-People may get more interested in politics and more willing to participate
Cons:
-True democracy (all people are ignorant on a large amount of subjects which could lead to poor decisions en masse)
-Uninformed voters, instead of voting for a person to make decisions, will now be voting on specific items.
-Representative not free to act without first consulting the people. This would be cumbersome.
-How do you deal with decisions based on classified information?
-How do you propose a law? Do you have to go through a draft process with your state citizens first?
-What happens when your constituents make a choice that you can not in good conscience follow through on? Say they are against equal marriage rights and you are for it.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
This guy clearly doesn't understand the job he's applying for. We live in a REPUBLIC.. which means we elect people to vote on our behalf for/against proposed laws.
Our founders knew that people did not have the time to read, understand, and vote on each and every issue.
Do you really think technology changes that? In the 2009-2010 congress, there were: 9239 proposed bills, 998 acted on by the congress, 26 failed, and 366 enacted = 10629 bills.
Each one hundreds or even thousands of pages long.
So seriously ask yourself: do you have time to read a several hundred page law, filled with legalese and references to other laws, 29 times per day every day of the year?
There's a reason why our REPRESENTATIVES have dozens of staff.
I don't just want an elected official to do what I say. If I'm honest I'll admit that I don't give things that aren't my full-time job enough consideration to make decisions I want acted on. I want my elected official to spend more time considering it that I did. I want him to take into account my wishes, and the wishes of everyone else he represents, but also do some research that I didn't do, surround himself with experts that I don't have access to, and talk to people that aren't in my social circles, and make a better decision than I can. I vote for people I hope can do these things with diligence and integrity, not people who will vote the will of a million uninformed people.
I know you are being tongue in cheek with this remark, but I think our Founding Father's might have actually had a clear plan in mind when they said you had to own property to vote.
I think it has to do with being invested in the future of the country. Maybe we should bring something like this back. It doesn't have to be property, but maybe paying taxes? Just something to show you are actually a responsible citizen.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of
: government. It can only exist until the voters discover
: that they can vote themselves largesse from the Public
: Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes
: for the candidate promising the most benefits from the
: Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always
: collapses over loose fiscal policy always to be followed by
: dictatorship.
: The average age of the worldâ€s greatest civilizations has
: been 200 years. Those nations always progress through the
: following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith,
: from spiritual faith to great courage,
: from great courage to liberty,
: from liberty to abundance,
: from abundance to selfishness,
: from selfishness to complacency,
: from complacency to dependency,
: from dependency back into bondage."
: â€"Alexander Fraser Tytler Lord Woodhouselee (1748-1813),
: "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic",
: Scottish historian at Edinburgh University
21st Century Renaissance Man
An elected official owes the people not only his industry but his judgement. And he betrays them if he sacrifices it for their opinion.
Paraphrased.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
First off, I'm an elected official and sit on a town council, so I have some insight in this. This sounds crass, but people are too dumb to understand every issue and special interests will get constituents to manipulate polls.
The reason we have elected officials is quite simply because the process of governing in a democracy is time consuming and requires people who can devote time to actually studying issues and making decisions. The average person may have time to study an issue here or an issue there, but no one has time to study every proposed bill and dig through the gory details of all state statutes. That's not to say you need to be a lawyer to understand this stuff, because most of the time you don't, but you need time. It's also not to say most people can't understand a particular topic, because 90% of the time most people can, it's understanding how they relate that gets difficult. For example, there could be a proposed bill for something like "Allow counties to assess 100% of voted mills for rural fire department special districts that choose not to collect their entire levied mills." Well, it may not make any sense and may need to die in committee if a bill was passed last year that says, "Rural fire department special districts crossing county lines must follow the same boundaries as school districts unless a park district exists along the same boundaries with a corresponding mill levy." Really exciting stuff that most people just aren't going to care about.
Even assuming people can intimately spend time to understand issues, it's astonishing how much people want to just jump on special interest bandwagons. When it comes to state issues, all it takes is some large outfit to take notice and rile up it's base. If you're going to poll people, you're simply going to get a skewed poll on any subject and moderates are going to get drowned out. That's the last thing we need. Take the example above - one group can easily skew it to say, "The county governments want to raise your taxes and take more money from you!" Another group could easily say, "We absolutely better fire protection and here's a way to do it without raising taxes." Both groups could be right, both could be wrong, or the answer is something more gray and in the middle. Most likely it's gray and in the middle and most likely mindboggingly boring and most likely only brought up because Rep. Joe Smith in West County ran into the issue, needed clarification in the state statutes about it, and it's going to be another 50 years before someone else cares about it.
Now, having said that, I think anything that gets people to get involved with their government is a good thing. Most people simply like to bitch about it without understanding it or participating in it. (Hey you - if you've never gone to your local town council meeting, you should do it sometime just to see how it works. You'll learn something about the people you vote for.)
----- obSig
The vast majority of bills introduced could be boiled down to a handful of simple yes or no questions. The really complicated stuff, should just be immediately canned. There isn't any need for it.
So we make the bills simpler, try to boil everything down to a few sentences, and ignore anything more complicated? Yes, this sounds like a great idea </sarcasm>
BTW, if congress writes a simple bill that says the government will carry out task X. Guess who's responsible for doing that? The executive branch/the President.
Just because you write a simple bill does not mean the complexity has gone away. And if the bill does not specify HOW to do X, then the President will decide how that is done.
In other words, you have turned the president into a super-representative. You've concentrated power in the President.
How is that better than 400+ people deciding?
If you like dictators, you're welcome to leave.
You post problems, but answers are obvious.
Points 1&2&3&4 Well the banks manage online banking OK. I haven't noticed the extra odd $million in my account recently.. Just use their system with an accessible vote history on each account. And make the name-encrypted database available to everyone, and also use open source software where possible, but especially to tally the vote database.
Point 5. If people take so little interest, they probably don't even vote for representatives. So no loss.
Point 6. What, with guns and stuff? Maybe in countries that have gun control. I wouldn't
want to be one of those "special people who go round people's houses and make sure they vote the right way" in the USA.
I alway thought we went to representative democracy because taking a poll over the whole of the US was impractical back in the 1700s. Silly me! It's obvious now. The scaling problem was not the reason.