Ask Candidate Jeremy Hansen About Direct Democracy in Vermont

We mentioned yesterday Jeremy Hansen's run for the Vermont Senate. There are a lot of political races currently active in the U.S.; what makes Hansen's interesting (besides his background in computer science) is his pledge to use modern communication technology to provide a taste of direct representation within a representative democracy. He makes a claim not many candidates (and probably even fewer elected officials) ever will: "A representative should be elected who would work strictly as an advisor and make all policy and voting decisions based on the will of his or her constituents, regardless of personal opinion." To that end, Hansen says that if he's elected, he'll employ "an accessible online voting platform to allow discussion and voting on bills" for his constituents. He's agreed to answer questions about how such a system could work, and the nature of democracy in today's ultra-connected world, in which distance and communication delays are much smaller than they were even 20 years ago, never mind 200. So ask Hansen whatever questions you'd like about his plans and philosophy; as always, ask as many questions as you please, but please separate them into separate posts, lest ye be modded down.

Comments

Security?

[eldavojohn]

To that end, Hansen says that if he's elected, he'll employ "an accessible online voting platform to allow discussion and voting on bills" for his constituents.

How are you going to stop someone from hacking this system? How will accountability be implemented while protecting voter's anonymity (so that employers or other interested parties with leverage can't influence their vote)?

What Is Right but Unpopular

[eldavojohn]

So ask Hansen whatever questions you'd like about his plans and philosophy;

Throughout history many leaders -- Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman and even George W. Bush -- have made decisions that they felt were "right" but were definitely unpopular. Post hoc, we can see the effects and judge those actions. Now these were all high level actions but similar things do happen at the state and county level. Example: Your county's schools are failing horribly and need money but the only place you have money is vehicle tax that is supposed to go to your roads. You propose (if you are even going to take such actions) to move some money from the road fund to the schools -- sacrificing potential traffic problems in the name of education and staying above backwater Mississippi standards. Your populace (who have completed high school and already make long commutes) disagree with you when their vote fails to pass the proposition. What do you do? Maybe an example closer to home: With soaring copper prices, someone proposes to reopen The Elizabeth Mine but the EPA warns you that clean up from 150 years of abuse hasn't even concluded yet. Unfortunately your populace votes for their jobs and temporary income over the environment, what do you do?

Re:What Is Right but Unpopular

[dgatwood]

The thing is, the people of the county have a right to decide whether their education or their roads are more important. The purpose of indirect democracy is not to protect the people from bad decisions, but to ensure that no group of people can unjustly oppress another merely because of their quantity. In order for such an unpopular decision to be appropriate, you would have to show that there was a group of people who were going to be severely harmed by the continued operation of the schools in such a manner who did not agree with the decision, and that those people had no other options (private schools, homeschooling, etc.). That's actually a pretty high bar because it only takes one stay-at-home parent out of said group of households to provide an alternative for the kids whose parents want them to learn.

Regarding the mine, operating under modern regulations, I wouldn't expect the mine to pose substantially greater threat to the environment while operating than it does just sitting there idle. The burden of proof should be on the environmentalists that this is not the case. This is a relatively high bar, because if reopening the mine were not relatively harmless, the environmentalists would have pushed for (and gotten) more regulations over the proper operation of mines years ago.

In other words, both of those are poor examples of why we should not have direct democracy. Good (recent) examples include California's prop 8, where the majority clearly denied the rights of significant minority groups.

Finally, although I agree in principle that tyranny of the majority is not that much better than our current plutocracy, in the absence of limits on paid political speech, it will inevitably devolve back into a plutocracy eventually anyway. The problem is not the form of government, but rather the fact that campaign finance laws have not been enhanced to mitigate the power imbalance caused by the growing disparity in wealth between big corporations/unions/PACs/political parties and the average member of the general public.

Don't you risk vote buying?

[Kupfernigk]

In effect, isn't there a risk that following your idea will simply mean that you will vote according to who buys the most online votes, whether by advertising or direct corruption? In this country (the UK) there is a long history of people voting for extreme parties or positions in elections that do not seem to matter. We believe that our representatives have not only the right, but the duty, to identify what is best for their constituents rather than simply to follow whoever shouts loudest.

Do You Experience Any Apprehension?

[eldavojohn]

At the prospect of going from a professor of deterministic systems to someone who will be a part of and responding to an inherently chaotic and non-deterministic system?

And also

[Anonymous Coward]

People are too stupid to govern themselves. The will of the majority can actually be quite harmful, unjust, or simply unmaintainable, which is why a representative democracy works better than a direct democracy.

Of course, the more power you give to one person, however competent he may be, the more evil he becomes. There really isn't a solution to that problem. But disempowering evil by empowering stupid is jumping from the frying pan into the eternal flaming abyss.

How will the Web-challenged be represented?

[Anonymous Coward]

What will you do to hear the will of those who aren't on the Web? Many seniors aren't (e.g. my father): will their thoughts be selectively excluded from the voting?