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Desdinova
Dec 16, 2004
I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!
Been reading about a few organisations on the internet that are in favour of a direct democracy, similar to Switzerland's current model.

It seems to have a lot going for it, no matter your political beliefs - everyone gets to vote on whatever is interesting to them, and with an equal vote they can affect direct parliamentary change without the need of a cabinet, elected politicans, massively reduced corruption, and overcoming disenfranchisment of the common sentiment that people feel after engaging in politics for awhile, ala "The next government will undo the previous government's changes, I have little say, I'm voting for someone who I only partially agree with, the person who speaks most for me."

Under Direct Democracy people vote on any issue that is considered important - enough people (how many is a good question) raise an issue, such as capital punishment, legalisation of substances, etc. and then a discussion, and then a set time later, a vote. If the vote is passed it becomes law.

While it is true that people can be idiots, if the decision turns an unfavourable outcome, then it can be voted on again with sufficient interest in the issue (which of course, there would be).

There would be quick, efficent change, and problems would be solved without the hindrance of lobbyists, who, while still being able to influence the population, would be seen through and many people are harder to corrupt than an individual, no matter his position in society.

This is just a brief overview of a possible alternative to the RED VS BLUE dogfight that politics seems at the moment, and it would be interesting to see either additional information, points of contradiction towards the system, and how we could best implement it.

The DD system could also be used to radically reform the judicial process, ensuring a fairer trial, without people who have the most money getting the best lawyer/solicitor, and perhaps the removal of the capitalist bail system that is in place.

Edit:

Direct Democracy as it's been done in the past has failed, and this is largely due to as another poster made - people cba with going to a local meeting to vote on what day the bins get emptied.

The reason it can work now is the thing we're using. The Internet.

Experts in their fields are interested in their fields, from plumbers and museum curators to economists and publicans.

They sign up to their fields voting forum, ala Reddit, and vote and propose motions - changing what pipe to connect to pipe b when a new pipe is invented or whatever.

People could sign up to whatever forums they wanted, and have a voice that would be responded to by anyone else. A lot of people do this out of interest, and the best people would be in a position to enact swift and efficient motions.

The people (like me) who know gently caress all about plumbing, wouldn't choose to vote, leaving a collection of mainly plumbers running the plumbing of a country, and eventually, this would work internationally. ALSO IN A GALACTIC SPACE FEDERATION! Ahem.

Desdinova fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jun 18, 2020

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Baronash
Feb 29, 2012

So what do you want to be called?

Desdinova posted:

There would be quick, efficent change

Have you ever tried to get 10 people to agree on what to eat?

Desdinova
Dec 16, 2004
I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!
No, but I get what you mean.

Still, by group discussion within a timeframe and then voting change would be enacted, and if wrong could be undone at the next vote.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
The big problem with direct democracy is that most people would not really be knowledgeable
about the necessary decisions.
How about a system where the voters can put people in charge who are sort of experts in certain relevant fields? That sounds like something which might work.

Honestly, Swiss democracy sucks and gets racist about every topic.

cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jun 16, 2020

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

cant cook creole bream posted:


How about a system where the voters can put people in charge who are sort of experts in certain relevant fields? That sounds like something which might work.


It sounds a lot like representative democracy to me. Like, the whole idea is that we elect people who represent us because we ordinary folks on the street can't be arsed to sit down and learn about minutiae and sit in a whole lot of really boring meetings all the time, and those people appoint experts and functionaries to do specialized work.

Unfortunately, aside from stricter limits on the terms that representatives serve, implementing multi-member proportional voting, decreasing constituency sizes to <10,000 and so on, I can't really think of any system that would be better than representative democracy. I sure as gently caress don't want to have to sit on my local citizen council every Saturday evening or whatever and listen to all my neighbors complain and vote on something I didn't bother to learn about because it's more interesting to watch Youtube or play games than nerd out about legislation.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather

DrSunshine posted:

It sounds a lot like representative democracy to me.

Is that so? How peculiar.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

cant cook creole bream posted:

How about a system where the voters can put people in charge who are sort of experts in certain relevant fields? That sounds like something which might work.

It'd be nice to have more direct democratic control of the cabinet, rather than simply putting every policy question to a referendum or trusting the executive to put together a cabinet. For example, imagine being able to vote for Biden, but also for a HHS secretary who's strongly in favour of Medicare For All.

I'm sure there are non-obvious disadvantages but it's a nice concept, in my head.

Peanut President
Nov 5, 2008



Direct democracy loving blows. California has a limited form of it and they voted to ban gay marriage twice.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather

Peanut President posted:

Direct democracy loving blows. California has a limited form of it and they voted to ban gay marriage twice.

This demonstrates the problem with direct democracy quiet well. On avarage, a single voter is only for the things which benefit them personally. This leads to a form of mob thinking. Since there are considerably less gay than straight people, it's a bit more likely for such a law to fail in that system. It would be even less even if it was an example where the majority would actually set themselves in a worse situation, rather than just "devaluing the holy concept of marriage."

But if you look at a system with an elected leader, in theory that person would be interested in passing laws to pander to some smaller, but significant voting blocks. For example, some governor might present himself as gay friendly and allow gay marriage because he things homosexual people will help his reellection, while most straight people won't care in a significant negative way.
This way, representative election can help to bring power to otherwise insignificant minorities.

The problem is that this is directly opposed to the idea of one person one vote, since voting blocks would be worth more than the sum of their parts. Also, many politicians prefer to pander to one infinitesimal, but incredibly relevant voting minority. Billionaire.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

PT6A posted:

It'd be nice to have more direct democratic control of the cabinet, rather than simply putting every policy question to a referendum or trusting the executive to put together a cabinet. For example, imagine being able to vote for Biden, but also for a HHS secretary who's strongly in favour of Medicare For All.

I'm sure there are non-obvious disadvantages but it's a nice concept, in my head.

The disadvantages mostly come down to infighting within the Executive Branch. What happens when a Cabinet Secretary refuses to implement an Executive Order, for example?

Though I've had a somewhat similar idea of splitting the Presidency into multiple positions; one would deal with foreign policy (and thus would appoint the Secretaries of Defense and State), and another would deal with domestic policy (and thus would appoint most of the other Cabinet Secretaries). The presidential veto and certain other powers (judicial appointments?) would either go to a third new position (a "tribune") or to the Vice President. Maybe there would also be a "rex sacer" would would retain the pomp and ceremony that currently surrounds the President but very little actual power. Probably there would still be infighting where domestic and foreign policy intersected, but there would at least be someone in charge of foreign policy who was elected based on foreign policy issues, as opposed to the current system, where Presidents are elected based on domestic policy despite actually having more power in the foreign policy realm.

Obviously this would never happen, though; it's hard to see the necessary constitutional amendments passing unless there was so much consensus on substantive policy issues that it would be unnecessary. This is true of basically all serious US constitutional reforms.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Jun 17, 2020

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Silver2195 posted:

The disadvantages mostly come down to infighting within the Executive Branch. What happens when a Cabinet Secretary refuses to implement an Executive Order, for example?

Though I've had a somewhat similar idea of splitting the Presidency into multiple positions; one would deal with foreign policy (and thus would appoint the Secretaries of Defense and State), and another would deal with domestic policy (and thus would appoint most of the other Cabinet Secretaries). The presidential veto and certain other powers (judicial appointments?) would either go to a third new position (a "tribune") or to the Vice President. Maybe there would also be a "rex sacer" would would retain the pomp and ceremony that currently surrounds the President but very little actual power. Probably there would still be infighting where domestic and foreign policy intersected, but there would at least be someone in charge of foreign policy who was elected based on foreign policy issues, as opposed to the current system, where Presidents are elected based on domestic policy despite actually having more power in the foreign policy realm.

Obviously this would never happen, though; it's hard to see the necessary constitutional amendments passing unless there was so much consensus on substantive policy issues that it would be unnecessary. This is true of basically all serious US constitutional reforms.

My preference would be to do away with the Executive Branch entirely. Why does the Executive need to be a co-equal branch of government? What do we really gain from it? In almost every sub-national, sub-state level government body, an elected board appoints and dismisses professional executives at their discretion. There should be a unicameral legislative body that appoints executives to carry out the peoples' will on a national scale. Under that system, the President would be nothing more than a kind of administrator that the legislature appoints to oversee the technocratic business of running a national bureaucracy.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

DrSunshine posted:

My preference would be to do away with the Executive Branch entirely. Why does the Executive need to be a co-equal branch of government? What do we really gain from it? In almost every sub-national, sub-state level government body, an elected board appoints and dismisses professional executives at their discretion. There should be a unicameral legislative body that appoints executives to carry out the peoples' will on a national scale. Under that system, the President would be nothing more than a kind of administrator that the legislature appoints to oversee the technocratic business of running a national bureaucracy.

I think you would have to introduce proportional representation as well; otherwise the two-party system would still be entrenched, so there would be no need to form parliamentary coalitions, and thus no real constraints on the Speaker/Prime Minister barring an unlikely backbencher rebellion. (The UK does have multiple major parties without proportional representation, somehow, but the UK isn't exactly a positive model to point to at the moment).

In the end, I think the real problems with America's form of government lie in things like the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandering. It feels weird to talk about, e.g., direct democracy, when we don't even really have representative democracy!

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jun 17, 2020

T. Bombastus
Feb 18, 2013

cant cook creole bream posted:

The big problem with direct democracy is that most people would not really be knowledgeable
about the necessary decisions.
How about a system where the voters can put people in charge who are sort of experts in certain relevant fields? That sounds like something which might work.

Honestly, Swiss democracy sucks and gets racist about every topic.
How does this hypothetical system deal with a situation where most of the people in charge are experts in the same field, making their collective expertise relatively narrow and unrepresentative of the population at large?

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Silver2195 posted:

I think you would have to introduce proportional representation as well; otherwise the two-party system would still be entrenched, so there would be no need to form parliamentary coalitions, and thus no real constraints on the Speaker/Prime Minister barring an unlikely backbencher rebellion. (The UK does have multiple major parties without proportional representation, somehow, but the UK isn't exactly a positive model to point to at the moment).

In the end, I think the real problems with America's form of government lie in things like the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandering. It feels weird to talk about, e.g., direct democracy, when we don't even really have representative democracy!

Well yeah, of course. I've already mentioned it in my first post in this thread - what I envision would be a major step forward in democracy isn't necessarily direct democracy, but a more direct representative democracy.

That entails a few big reforms, reforms which (more broadly speaking) no one nation on earth presently has in full, though many countries have some of these features.They are:

1) A ratio of legislator to population of 10,000:1 or less.
2) Multi-winner proportional districts.
3) Unicameral legislature with the legislative body as the supreme organ of the state.
4) Full public funding of elections.
5) National holidays for voting.
6) National political parties regulated by strict legal guidelines with respects to procedures and the selection of candidates, etc.
7) Two year term limits for representatives, caps on maximum consecutive terms.
8) Independently elected citizen oversight bodies for all government bureaus.
9) Private organizations banned from donating to or advertising for elections.
10) A living Constitution with a scheduled automatic 10-year updating process.
11) Caps on private wealth for eligibility into civil service. No individual with wealth >5x the national average should be allowed to run for any office.
12) Algorithmic redrawing of districts into areas that accurately reflect the political affiliations of their constituent populations.
13) All citizens automatically registered to vote at age of majority, vote by mail as opt-out.

That's just a few of the possible reforms that could be taken. I'm aware that for a country as large as China or the USA, that this would create legislatures with tens or hundreds of thousands of representatives, but there's no other way that we can ensure that democracy doesn't chug under its own mass as in a direct democracy, or become captured by a crooked political elite. Of course, true political democracy can't really be achieved unless we first have economic democracy in the form of some kind of socialism, but that's not the focus of this thread.

DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Jun 17, 2020

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

cant cook creole bream posted:

But if you look at a system with an elected leader, in theory that person would be interested in passing laws to pander to some smaller, but significant voting blocks. For example, some governor might present himself as gay friendly and allow gay marriage because he things homosexual people will help his reellection, while most straight people won't care in a significant negative way.
This way, representative election can help to bring power to otherwise insignificant minorities.

This is an incredibly important effect in US politics. Special interest groups dominate a lot of government actions. When your livelihood depends on a particular government policy/regulation/law/whatever, you are much more invested in those laws & regulations than everybody else, and the guild/union/lobby which acts on your behalf will have an over-sized influence on the political decisions relative to the ambivalent majority 'opposition'.

silence_kit fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Jun 18, 2020

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

DrSunshine posted:

Well yeah, of course. I've already mentioned it in my first post in this thread - what I envision would be a major step forward in democracy isn't necessarily direct democracy, but a more direct representative democracy.

That entails a few big reforms, reforms which (more broadly speaking) no one nation on earth presently has in full, though many countries have some of these features.They are:

1) A ratio of legislator to population of 10,000:1 or less.
2) Multi-winner proportional districts.
3) Unicameral legislature with the legislative body as the supreme organ of the state.
4) Full public funding of elections.
5) National holidays for voting.
6) National political parties regulated by strict legal guidelines with respects to procedures and the selection of candidates, etc.
7) Two year term limits for representatives, caps on maximum consecutive terms.
8) Independently elected citizen oversight bodies for all government bureaus.
9) Private organizations banned from donating to or advertising for elections.
10) A living Constitution with a scheduled automatic 10-year updating process.
11) Caps on private wealth for eligibility into civil service. No individual with wealth >5x the national average should be allowed to run for any office.
12) Algorithmic redrawing of districts into areas that accurately reflect the political affiliations of their constituent populations.
13) All citizens automatically registered to vote at age of majority, vote by mail as opt-out.

That's just a few of the possible reforms that could be taken. I'm aware that for a country as large as China or the USA, that this would create legislatures with tens or hundreds of thousands of representatives, but there's no other way that we can ensure that democracy doesn't chug under its own mass as in a direct democracy, or become captured by a crooked political elite. Of course, true political democracy can't really be achieved unless we first have economic democracy in the form of some kind of socialism, but that's not the focus of this thread.

I'm on board with around half of these things. Some of them seem to contradict each other; if the legislature is "the supreme organ of the state," then are the "independently elected citizen oversight boards" merely advisory? Term limits for representatives are a terrible idea; they lead to a legislature full of inexperienced members who end up relying on staffers and/or lobbyists. And I'm not sure how the automatic constitutional changes would work either.

Drone_Fragger
May 9, 2007


direct democracy is complete poo poo, all you have to see is Switzerland nearly torpedoing their entire economy because joe bloggs on the street doesn't understand that voting to ban free movement with the EU also means all the equivalent treaties you've got with the EU that allow your country to function at all will also be torn up at the exact same time because of the reciprocity arrangements.

You need to elect people to understand the bigger picture and understand the effects. the average person on the street is too dumb, lazy or don't care enough to do that research. Which is why we elect and pay other people to do it for us.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Or alernatively, you need to restructure society to the point that it is more understandable to the average person.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Imagine what would happen if chuds ever got 50%+1, that's the downside of direct democracy.


But the elected officials don't know poo poo about poo poo either. They have teams and hire experts (and listen to lobbyists). Therefore I propose that instead of elections, we fill the positions randomly from the population, a-la jury duty. They serve a year, maybe part time, and can volunteer for one extension. Start by replacing the Senate with this.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

mobby_6kl posted:

Imagine what would happen if chuds ever got 50%+1, that's the downside of direct democracy.

One might suggest they currently manage that quite well with less than 50%.

Desdinova
Dec 16, 2004
I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

cant cook creole bream posted:

The big problem with direct democracy is that most people would not really be knowledgeable
about the necessary decisions.
How about a system where the voters can put people in charge who are sort of experts in certain relevant fields? That sounds like something which might work.

Honestly, Swiss democracy sucks and gets racist about every topic.

Direct Democracy as it's been done in the past has failed, and this is largely due to as another poster made - people cba with going to a local meeting to vote on what day the bins get emptied.

The reason it can work now is the thing we're using. The Internet.

Experts in their fields are interested in their fields, from plumbers and museum curators to economists and publicans.

They sign up to their fields voting forum, ala Reddit, and vote and propose motions - changing what pipe to connect to pipe b when a new pipe is invented or whatever.

People could sign up to whatever forums they wanted, and have a voice that would be responded to by anyone else. A lot of people do this out of interest, and the best people would be in a position to enact swift and efficient motions.

The people (like me) who know gently caress all about plumbing, wouldn't choose to vote, leaving a collection of mainly plumbers running the plumbing of a country, and eventually, this would work internationally. ALSO IN A GALACTIC SPACE FEDERATION! Ahem.

Drone_Fragger posted:

direct democracy is complete poo poo, all you have to see is Switzerland nearly torpedoing their entire economy because joe bloggs on the street doesn't understand that voting to ban free movement with the EU also means all the equivalent treaties you've got with the EU that allow your country to function at all will also be torn up at the exact same time because of the reciprocity arrangements.

You need to elect people to understand the bigger picture and understand the effects. the average person on the street is too dumb, lazy or don't care enough to do that research. Which is why we elect and pay other people to do it for us.


The UK voted for Brexit by a narrow margin. While I agree with (hopefully the majority) that lack of freedom of movement is a bad thing, if people chose to discuss this important issue and discuss it on a forum designed to decide a country's response to an issue, a lot of people would comment, discuss with others, and then vote. Popular viewpoints on both sides could be displayed with common responses both positive and negative would cut down on repetition and getting lost in a sea of billions of posts. Similar to another debate forum, forgot the name atm. This would deal with the valid issue DrSunshine mentioned.


Peanut President posted:

Direct democracy loving blows. California has a limited form of it and they voted to ban gay marriage twice.

Bet this was because there are only a minority of gays compared to fundamentalist religious types and homophobics. The majority aren't bothered, but if you got a $ or two every time you voted, most people would probably vote for a dollar as well as vote yes as it doesn't effect them. Then again maybe I'm giving people too much credit.

Edit: Updating the OP.

Zachack
Jun 1, 2000




Desdinova posted:

The people (like me) who know gently caress all about plumbing, wouldn't choose to vote, leaving a collection of mainly plumbers running the plumbing of a country, and eventually, this would work internationally. ALSO IN A GALACTIC SPACE FEDERATION! Ahem.
If this works the way I think you envision the best outcome is that you wind up in a technocracy, and the more likely outcomes are either the Plumbing Forum gets brigaded by a specific industry/cartel that can now literally and directly write the laws without any impediment, or the Plumbing Forum gets invaded by the retired/insane that bog everything down (or worse, are successful), or a literal goon invasion where every pipe connector has to have a gold ring painted on one side for Lord Goatse. And that's for the dry subjects like plumbing - wait until you get in the vaccines or fluoridation or blue/black dress forum.

Fill Baptismal
Dec 15, 2008
The Venn diagram overlap of:

1)Is a good policy idea (and therefore is at least somewhat complex, because the loving world is complicated)
2)The median voter who doesn't pay much attention to politics can be realistically convinced is a good idea
3)Can't be done through the normal legislative process

is not exactly a large one. Almost every problem that a national referendum could potentially solve would be better served by just changing the legislative process in question to be more representative (fairer districts, proportional representation, etc) and more competent (actual pay for state legislators so that they can do it as a full time job rather than having to be already wealthy, more staff resources, more technical expertise available to the legislature as a body so they don't have to rely on lobbyists for information), with less potential negative side effects.

Desdinova
Dec 16, 2004
I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Zachack posted:

If this works the way I think you envision the best outcome is that you wind up in a technocracy, and the more likely outcomes are either the Plumbing Forum gets brigaded by a specific industry/cartel that can now literally and directly write the laws without any impediment, or the Plumbing Forum gets invaded by the retired/insane that bog everything down (or worse, are successful), or a literal goon invasion where every pipe connector has to have a gold ring painted on one side for Lord Goatse. And that's for the dry subjects like plumbing - wait until you get in the vaccines or fluoridation or blue/black dress forum.

The best in the field would be motioning votes that would be mainly voted on by them, but also could be undone if the vote doesn't improve things as thought. The system as it is has someone who may be educated in an entirely different field voting on issues that he/she barely understands and only signs documents without reading them for a paycheque. Downvoting insane comments and even commenting on other users is something that could be effective, again on a trial basis to see the best way of running the group of forums.

There's a lot of people out there who get all :tinfoil: about fluoridation, but they are in an echo chamber with each other for the most part, and while most people have no interest in the issue and wouldn't comment, some people out there would point out evidence and tests that have been done to show that it isn't causing the frogs to turn gay (jk), and when it comes to the vote the evidence would have been responded to and commented, and eventually even hard boiled views can change with enough information.

Drone_Fragger
May 9, 2007


Desdinova posted:

The UK voted for Brexit by a narrow margin. While I agree with (hopefully the majority) that lack of freedom of movement is a bad thing, if people chose to discuss this important issue and discuss it on a forum designed to decide a country's response to an issue, a lot of people would comment, discuss with others, and then vote. Popular viewpoints on both sides could be displayed with common responses both positive and negative would cut down on repetition and getting lost in a sea of billions of posts. Similar to another debate forum, forgot the name atm. This would deal with the valid issue DrSunshine mentioned.

We had literal 24 hour coverage of brexit, with the people championing remain explaining all of these problems. said people were then told they were out-of-touch, didn't understand the average englishments problems (racism and a huge chip on the shoulder) and additionally were sneering down their wine drinking noses at the common people by the equivilent of your mate barry down the pub, which of course worked completely in a lot of cases because of a growing distrust in the UK's political system.

Direct democracy simply doesn't work unless you're going to train everyone in the country to be as informed about the macro effects of things as politicians, (alledgedly) are. It's not my job to understand how leaving the EU will upset the UK's cabotage rights and end up with an EU enforced quota, hence decimating the UK trucking industry and resulting in food prices shooting up for several years, for instance. And trying to explain this to people is a waste of time because they have better things to spend their time on, such as their lives.

Desdinova
Dec 16, 2004
I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Drone_Fragger posted:

We had literal 24 hour coverage of brexit, with the people championing remain explaining all of these problems. said people were then told they were out-of-touch, didn't understand the average englishments problems (racism and a huge chip on the shoulder) and additionally were sneering down their wine drinking noses at the common people by the equivilent of your mate barry down the pub, which of course worked completely in a lot of cases because of a growing distrust in the UK's political system.

Direct democracy simply doesn't work unless you're going to train everyone in the country to be as informed about the macro effects of things as politicians, (alledgedly) are. It's not my job to understand how leaving the EU will upset the UK's cabotage rights and end up with an EU enforced quota, hence decimating the UK trucking industry and resulting in food prices shooting up for several years, for instance. And trying to explain this to people is a waste of time because they have better things to spend their time on, such as their lives.

We can learn about the effects of things (if we don't already) and if it was more than a LEAVE EU YES OR NO vote than we would have been able to vote on what we wanted to get out of potentially leaving the EU. As it stood, people had to decide on whether on the whole the EU was worth staying with or not, rather than this part of the EU I agree with, this part I don't. With an Online Direct Democracy we would be able to vote for (or against) freedom of entry to EU nationals, inspection of food at border arrival etc. If this would have taken place it seems we would have remained in the EU, on our terms, with the majority still having their way. If the people have no interest, they don't vote, their loss.

Oh, and I remembered the name of the site where the pros and cons of an issue are debated to try and reach a consensus: Kialo

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
So how does a hypothetical digital direct democracy deal with the ever persistent threat of cyber actors? Why is it that cybersecurity experts have consistently warned against holding elections using computer technology? I could see a nation that had set its sights on citizen participation in the democratic process online set up some kind of public key encryption system, but what if a citizen loses or has their key stolen? A government server can have all the firewalls and protection it can, but what about vulnerabilities in the endpoints-- the devices that citizens use to access the election system? What if some threat actor installs keyloggers to capture peoples' passwords? It happens all the time. Most people fall for phishing attacks and can never be arsed to bother with the inconvenience of two factor authentication. And you're proposing to put an entire country's very legislative system online?

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather

Desdinova posted:

We can learn about the effects of things (if we don't already) and if it was more than a LEAVE EU YES OR NO vote than we would have been able to vote on what we wanted to get out of potentially leaving the EU. As it stood, people had to decide on whether on the whole the EU was worth staying with or not, rather than this part of the EU I agree with, this part I don't. With an Online Direct Democracy we would be able to vote for (or against) freedom of entry to EU nationals, inspection of food at border arrival etc. If this would have taken place it seems we would have remained in the EU, on our terms, with the majority still having their way. If the people have no interest, they don't vote, their loss.

Oh, and I remembered the name of the site where the pros and cons of an issue are debated to try and reach a consensus: Kialo

Yeah no, this is not true at all.
Part of the problem with Brexit was exactly that. People were thinking you could just cherry pick the parts of the EU you like and discard the rest. In such a theoretical specific vote, the Britons would have overwhelmingly voted against any payment to the EU, and would have denied freedom of movement, any sort of EU regulations and would have insisted to stay in the trade union. I.e. exactly the kind of unicorn dream Brexit Boris was preaching all along.

You can't just have an internal vote on specific agreements which involve another side. The Brexit negotiations between the EU and Great Britain are running along awfully and it looks like the country is running against a hard wall at the end of the year. Imagine how well that would go, if there was not even a person in between and each trade offer had to go through a process of a public vote and somehow each proposed change as well, until Britain has a new proposal which suits their majority internally. The only way Britains would agree with a new proposal would be if it again heavily favors them. But such a deal would be ridiculous bad for the EU and they'd throw it away within seconds.

The concept of direct democracy is incredibly bad and inefficient in negotiations. you basically need some intermediate who could broker an agreement, which could then be voted on. But then British voters would complain that this negotiator has to much power and that their specific idea of Brexit (All the good things, none of the bad) did not even make it to public vote.

And that example still assumes that the EU has competent leadership. A negotiation between two sides with a government of mob mentalities would absolutely go to war, rather than ever having a chance to find an agreement.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

The brexit referendum is an odd case in that it represents decades of the british representational government blaming the EU for all its problems combined with a major misinformation campaign by wealthy assholes and the media being unable and unwilling to present the factual reality of the situation if it wasn't actively cheering for the worst outcome. And the entire thing was called to settle a factional squabble within the government and as a result of a pledge by them in their election campaign.

So to call it a failure of direct democracy is, I think, wrong, in that it is more like a massive success of representational and oligarchical government in that people absorbed exactly the message the elite institutions had put out for decades and repeated it back to them, the same people who pushed for it won a very good election victory on it several years later, and are currently set to deliberately drop the economy off a cliff for fun so they can make even more money off the crash and likely use it as a vehicle to further dismantle public services. All in all an excellent result for top down governance, they get to do exactly what they want and get rich off it too.

You could also get into the question of how making one of the very few direct democratic decisions we get a simple stay/leave question as regards an extremely complicated set of international agreements, allowed the representative government to basically make up its own idea of what brexit means and tie it rhetorically back to the referendum regardless of whether that was actually what a majority voted for. Further cementing its role as essentially manufacturing consent for representative governance rather than actually being a good example of direct democracy.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jun 19, 2020

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Powerful people lying to the mob to fill their own pockets is like the central essence of direct democracy.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I mean I think I clearly demonstrated that it's a central tenet of representative democracy as well, though I would also concur with the general sentiment that direct democracy is not suitable for the governance of nation states composed of millions of people in wildly differing circumstances. But I would go on to suggest that neither is representative democracy, or dictatorship, or quite possibly anything, and that the lesson to draw from that is that if you want a well functioning democratic society you probably need to reduce the scale and the disparity of the society as much as possible.

So it follows that you could consider trying to give smaller regions greater autonomy, not just poltiically but economically too, combined with some method of reducing and ideally eliminating wealth inequality, which would create a better environment, I think, for direct democracy.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

cant cook creole bream posted:

Powerful people lying to the mob to fill their own pockets is like the central essence of direct democracy.
I don't get why people keep saying this or the posts about the lovely laws passed via direct democracy.

Besides ignoring the good laws passed via direct democracy (legal weed in various states is a good recent example), we're not looking at it in isolation. It's a potential alternative to representative democracy, and everyone here is well aware of the many, MANY terrible laws passed via existing systems.

The question isn't "would direct democracy make for lovely laws?", it's "would direct democracy make for more lovely laws than the current setup?", which is already pretty loving lovely.

It's not clear to me that a greater reliance on direct democracy would be worse. Sometimes you get dumb populist measures yes; other times, as with weed, you get something good passed that has popular support but for whatever reason the establishment is deathly afraid of passing.

edit: some US states have propositions/referendums, some don't. Maybe it would be worth looking at whether one group has better laws on average.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Jun 19, 2020

Drone_Fragger
May 9, 2007


representative democracy is only poo poo in the states (and the UK) because of the two party system, you realise.

First past the post leads to massive voter disinterest and makes a lot of people reconsider voting or caring about voting because their votes won't matter anyway, particularly in cases where neither of the parties on offer represent the persons views. People can't even vote honestly ("I wouldn't vote democrat *because* they're democrats, I'd be voting them because they're *not republicans*" for instance in most cases because neither of the parties are actually who'd they'd willingly vote for. Honestly a big part of the democrats 2016 defeat and arguably their 2020 one is that they're running on a no-policy platform of "you should vote for us!! we're not trump!! that's better!!".

Proportional representation has it's flaws but fundamentally people feel a lot happier with their politics when the people they vote to represent them actually represent their views, even if they don't necessarily win. Also means coalition politics are a lot more open, which at least leads to coalition governments where people understand who's making up the government, as opposed to here in the UK where the conservative "party" who currently runs the country is made up of an insane mix of free market liberals, insane europhobes who want to slobber on churcills dick, hawkish militants who seemingly only want to be in government to give contracts to BAE to bomb brown people and then finally, racists who simultainously hate foreigners and immigration but also don't think they should be stopped from living in france for tax reasons. In PR these should realistically all be seperate parties, and would make the discource in this country much more healthy. The tories have been basically trying to appease the 15% of their members who hate europe so much they want to stab themselves in the head repeatedly over it to prevent any kind of deal with europe, so now take that as a party policy, dragging the entire country into this garbage fire which in reality there is no political or public will for. The only real reason they get anything through is because they don't vote on the party line they'll get the party whip removed which basically means they'll not get any funding for their campaign in the next election, and hence will obviously lose.

Desdinova
Dec 16, 2004
I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

cant cook creole bream posted:

Yeah no, this is not true at all.
Part of the problem with Brexit was exactly that. People were thinking you could just cherry pick the parts of the EU you like and discard the rest. In such a theoretical specific vote, the Britons would have overwhelmingly voted against any payment to the EU, and would have denied freedom of movement, any sort of EU regulations and would have insisted to stay in the trade union. I.e. exactly the kind of unicorn dream Brexit Boris was preaching all along.

You can't just have an internal vote on specific agreements which involve another side. The Brexit negotiations between the EU and Great Britain are running along awfully and it looks like the country is running against a hard wall at the end of the year. Imagine how well that would go, if there was not even a person in between and each trade offer had to go through a process of a public vote and somehow each proposed change as well, until Britain has a new proposal which suits their majority internally. The only way Britains would agree with a new proposal would be if it again heavily favors them. But such a deal would be ridiculous bad for the EU and they'd throw it away within seconds.

The concept of direct democracy is incredibly bad and inefficient in negotiations. you basically need some intermediate who could broker an agreement, which could then be voted on. But then British voters would complain that this negotiator has to much power and that their specific idea of Brexit (All the good things, none of the bad) did not even make it to public vote.

And that example still assumes that the EU has competent leadership. A negotiation between two sides with a government of mob mentalities would absolutely go to war, rather than ever having a chance to find an agreement.

Good points here.

If the people could debate with themselves how to deal with Brexit, with a back and forth between the EU and a British Direct Democracy (or Online Direct Democracy, or ODD) we would have negotiated after debating things like "hey, maybe we should pay in to our larger than national system to get back a benefit from a group collective, but X euros is a bit much considering how beneficial we are to other countries"

Labelling all voters as the mob is literally the way that we put each other down and think of our neighbours as stupid and ignorant. Not that we're not.

cant cook creole bream posted:

Powerful people lying to the mob to fill their own pockets is like the central essence of direct democracy.

People do this all the time, regardless of the political system. If we have a direct democracy, people can repeat the propoganda they've been fed, and when it comes to the discussion stage they are shot down by the evidence that shows it to be what it is - propoganda designed to promote an emotionally negative response.
e.g.
Voter 1 motions: "The Daily Mail says Pakis come here to eat our swans! Ban all Pakis!"

Voters 2 - 9804985078: "There are no recorded instances of Pakistani people trying to gain access to Britain to consume swans.

Motion is denied.



OwlFancier posted:

I mean I think I clearly demonstrated that it's a central tenet of representative democracy as well, though I would also concur with the general sentiment that direct democracy is not suitable for the governance of nation states composed of millions of people in wildly differing circumstances. But I would go on to suggest that neither is representative democracy, or dictatorship, or quite possibly anything, and that the lesson to draw from that is that if you want a well functioning democratic society you probably need to reduce the scale and the disparity of the society as much as possible.

So it follows that you could consider trying to give smaller regions greater autonomy, not just poltiically but economically too, combined with some method of reducing and ideally eliminating wealth inequality, which would create a better environment, I think, for direct democracy.

Definitely agree on reducing disparity, especially in the U.S. where it seems (according to a TED talk) that only 0.02% of voters have any influence under the lobbying and campaign SuperPACs that sway politicians.

Millions of people, in various circumstances would still be able to debate an issue healthily within an Online Direct Democracy. Most people who vote Labour or Conservative, Democrats or Republicans, don't want troops in Afghanistan, therefore after some small discussion, the troops get pulled out, rather than doing so after thousands of deaths and business deals enacted.


One suggestion was to enact a local forum for voters to vote on, a national one, and eventually, an international forum for various issues which are voted on according to importance at their level.


DrSunshine posted:

So how does a hypothetical digital direct democracy deal with the ever persistent threat of cyber actors? Why is it that cybersecurity experts have consistently warned against holding elections using computer technology? I could see a nation that had set its sights on citizen participation in the democratic process online set up some kind of public key encryption system, but what if a citizen loses or has their key stolen? A government server can have all the firewalls and protection it can, but what about vulnerabilities in the endpoints-- the devices that citizens use to access the election system? What if some threat actor installs keyloggers to capture peoples' passwords? It happens all the time. Most people fall for phishing attacks and can never be arsed to bother with the inconvenience of two factor authentication. And you're proposing to put an entire country's very legislative system online?

Another good point, been reading about that recently, one option is to remove anonymity and use digital ID's, or a thumbprint like required to access your phone without a passcode.

Online voting is better than like how I last voted in the UK: With an erasable pencil on a piece of paper with no other markings. Like, no way that can be altered to suit those currently in power.

Edit: Been reading a few Direct Democracy reddits and a lot of people are supporting Liquid Democracy, which is basically the same but you can choose to delegate your vote on certain issues to someone who you think represents your viewpoints in issues where you have either little interest, little knowledge, or little effort to be spared upon the topic.
Haven't decided if delegates are preferred or not but gonna keep on reading and learning until the best answer arises.

Desdinova fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jun 20, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Desdinova posted:

Online voting is better than like how I last voted in the UK: With an erasable pencil on a piece of paper with no other markings. Like, no way that can be altered to suit those currently in power.

That is why the ballots are kept under surveillance by multiple people until they are counted, and they are also not unmarked, your ballot can be traced back to you personally, but the means to do so are sealed unless there is an accusation of voter fraud, in which case they can be unsealed and checked to make sure each vote matches up with a voter. The reason pencil is used rather than pen is becaus a pencil mark cannot be completely erased, whereas a pen could hypothetically be loaded with ink which fades shortly after use.

Whereas electronic voting doesn't have any of that, the vote could be intercepted at any point, or changed on the central server, and nobody would know, because there is no record and nobody is watched the inner workings of the computer. You're assuming all the software works as designed and hasn't been subverted at any point.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Desdinova posted:

Direct Democracy as it's been done in the past has failed, and this is largely due to as another poster made - people cba with going to a local meeting to vote on what day the bins get emptied.

The reason it can work now is the thing we're using. The Internet.

Experts in their fields are interested in their fields, from plumbers and museum curators to economists and publicans.

They sign up to their fields voting forum, ala Reddit, and vote and propose motions - changing what pipe to connect to pipe b when a new pipe is invented or whatever.

People could sign up to whatever forums they wanted, and have a voice that would be responded to by anyone else. A lot of people do this out of interest, and the best people would be in a position to enact swift and efficient motions.

The people (like me) who know gently caress all about plumbing, wouldn't choose to vote, leaving a collection of mainly plumbers running the plumbing of a country, and eventually, this would work internationally. ALSO IN A GALACTIC SPACE FEDERATION! Ahem.

The more likely result is that wealthy people with particular interests in the plumbing industry would flood the general populace with propaganda claiming that a given plumbing motion will have a sweeping negative impact on the lives of just about everyone, leading the actual plumbing experts to get overwhelmingly outvoted by a stampede of laymen. Since the experts are outnumbered by the general populace, the winning move will always be to try to manipulate the general populace rather than bothering with trying to convince the experts.

This is a fundamental problem with modern governance, though: he who controls information controls the people, one way or another, and it doesn't really matter that much what kind of political system you want to filter that through. If you place a priority on the opinions of experts, then those who desire power will simply fund the creation of their own alternate experts while working to undermine the very definition of "expert", as demonstrated by the way the idea of liberal technocratic government is currently collapsing all over the world. If you focus on the populace as a whole, who generally lack information on specific issues, then those who desire power will take control of the channels people use to obtain that information. Overall, people are dependent on information for our decision-making, and it doesn't really matter who you put in charge of the decision-making as long as the same people are in charge of the information.

Nurge
Feb 4, 2009

by Reene
Fun Shoe
Joining and leaving the EU is a good example of a situation where direct democracy fails hard. Even politicians, who ostensibly get selected for their ability in understanding complicated political and economic situations barely had any idea what would happen after joining. Popular referendums for something no normal person has a hope of understanding are a really terrible idea, and direct democracy would just make that same poo poo happen in every complex situation.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

OwlFancier posted:



Whereas electronic voting doesn't have any of that, the vote could be intercepted at any point, or changed on the central server, and nobody would know, because there is no record and nobody is watched the inner workings of the computer. You're assuming all the software works as designed and hasn't been subverted at any point.

It seems like society is able to use computers for everything else just fine. Billionaires are fine trusting electricity to store or move their billions with no major issue.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

It seems like society is able to use computers for everything else just fine. Billionaires are fine trusting electricity to store or move their billions with no major issue.

And if voter fraud happened on the scale of financial fraud I think you would question the ability of the system to perform its function?

And the outcome of financial fraud does not determine who controls the USA, financial transactions are not advertised internationally with a multi year run up. And billionaires do not want to disrupt the entire basis of the system by which they exercise power, i.e the financial system, but I guarantee you they would absolutely love to be able to control the legislature more than they already do, so that's exactly the sort of people you need to secure your electoral system against.

Nurge posted:

Joining and leaving the EU is a good example of a situation where direct democracy fails hard. Even politicians, who ostensibly get selected for their ability in understanding complicated political and economic situations barely had any idea what would happen after joining. Popular referendums for something no normal person has a hope of understanding are a really terrible idea, and direct democracy would just make that same poo poo happen in every complex situation.

I again find it extremely weird to suggest that representative governments doing both of those things is somehow a problem with direct democracy...

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Nurge
Feb 4, 2009

by Reene
Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

I again find it extremely weird to suggest that representative governments doing both of those things is somehow a problem with direct democracy...

My point is that the idea behind representative democracy is that your elected representatives at least should be more knowledgeable than you in extremely complex political situations because that's their entire job. Your average voter has absolutely no idea what the EU even is in practice.

e: This is also why I find it a loving hideously cowardly act that Cameron went ahead with the referendum. Making choices like that is literally what his entire government existed for. Same goes for the referendums to join we had in the 90s. Like asking people to choose something they have no hope of grasping the consequences of is some really terrible political attempt at responsibility shifting.

Nurge fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jun 20, 2020

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