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My statement was that giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely, and I gave some reasoning for that. Your response was that, not many

My statement was that giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely, and I gave some reasoning for that. Your response was that, not many people vote. I'm not sure how that addresses what I wrote?

bostik 10y ago
> giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely Psychology and sociology disagree with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue The only solution I can think of is to enact a set of laws that require and enforce science and evidence based legislation. However, this is such an affront to all the lobbying groups that even the suggestion of such laws will be aggressively attacked from every direction possible.
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  That link doesn't actually argue either way. It just presents some ideas with lots of "could be" and "under certain circumstances" and "proponents often counter" and so on. No sources. It does provide one example. But the example has nothing to do with referendums, it's about people being asked to vote on the same sort of question repeatedly in a short period of time. I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election, so the behaviour may be completely different. Do you have a better link?
  - bostik 10y ago
    There is research into the phenomenon, but since I don't want to even try to link to [cough sb], I can provide a couple of pointers for further research. - 10.2307/2108922 - (no idea why, but this has no DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895) - (no DOI either: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401000476 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401...) > I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election I think you are being somewhat dishonest here, and I would suspect you actually know that. From an individual voter's point of view there is very little practical difference: you are supposed to set time aside to go to the polling station at a given date, and cast your vote on an issue where it is HIGHLY unlikely that you have enough data to make an educated decision. Referendums attempt to distill a complex issue (or a set of issues) into a binary decision. (I find it relevant that binary option trading is a common source of scams: http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); elections attempt to distill a complex set of competing and mutually exclusive issues into a personality contest. Either way the only repeatibly reliable result is that no matter whose side wins, all the voters will eventually feel they have been shafted.
    - mike-cardwell 10y ago
      I don't know why you felt the need to call me dishonest. An election is for choosing who you want to defer decision making power to. Often you only agree with some of the things that person intends to do. The headline actions. And even then, you realise that they may not do some of the things they said they would, and will probably do many other things you never even hear about. A referendum is about answering a specific question. One you have probably never been asked in your life time. And hopefully one where the result will be an actual thing that takes place, e.g Brexit. I find it hard to believe that concepts such as voter fatigue would apply equally to those two considerably different things.
      - bostik 10y ago
        My apologies for that unclear statement. I meant that in this particular issue, I believe you are not being honest with yourself. There are several problems with voting fatigue, but chief among them is that the actual effects of the result are divorced from the outcome. It usually takes months, if not years, for a practical change to propagate from election campaigns to reality. (In the off-chance that an election campaign promise is actually adhered to.) So for most practical purposes a vote taking place has little resemblance to its practical results. We take the expectation of tight feedback loops as a given in UI design. If usability and results from user actions are not coupled, the user will get confused, irritated and eventually will just give up. Why would we expect voting to be any different? It's not just the vote itself that is causing fatigue, it's also the insane mental overload of having to deal with and the need to make sense of the constant (mis)information deluge. For months on end, as a voter you are supposed to digest a barrage of incoming information. It is tiring. And all this still boils down to the need to eventually set time aside go to a polling station to drop a piece of paper into a box, only to see that nothing really changes. Do this often enough and only the activists will be left. The silent majority can not be bothered to care enough.
2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
Right, you said: > What if the political and economic experts disagree with the majority, not just because of their political and economic knowledge, but because they are a very limited demographic and don't even consider many of the things that are important to the people who are not experts in those fields? So my understanding of your idea is, the perspective of experts and general populous is different. If we give people more chances to vote, they will have more opportunity to vote in a way that will address issues important to them. But we already have the opportunity to vote "from our perspective". But a lot of people don't care to. So why would having more opportunities to vote improve the this?
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  Because voting in a general election is different to voting in a referendum. A lot of people see voting in general elections as futile, because as far as they can see, all they get from any party is more of the same. Regardless of whether or not that viewpoint is correct, it doesn't apply to referendums. A referendum is about voting for a specific thing and getting it, or not. I think that if we have more referendums, people will start to realise the difference, and take part more.

bostik 10y ago

> giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely Psychology and sociology disagree with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue The only solution I can think of is to enact a set of laws that require and enforce science and evidence based legislation. However, this is such an affront to all the lobbying groups that even the suggestion of such laws will be aggressively attacked from every direction possible.

mike-cardwell 10y ago
That link doesn't actually argue either way. It just presents some ideas with lots of "could be" and "under certain circumstances" and "proponents often counter" and so on. No sources. It does provide one example. But the example has nothing to do with referendums, it's about people being asked to vote on the same sort of question repeatedly in a short period of time. I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election, so the behaviour may be completely different. Do you have a better link?
- bostik 10y ago
  There is research into the phenomenon, but since I don't want to even try to link to [cough sb], I can provide a couple of pointers for further research. - 10.2307/2108922 - (no idea why, but this has no DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895) - (no DOI either: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401000476 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401...) > I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election I think you are being somewhat dishonest here, and I would suspect you actually know that. From an individual voter's point of view there is very little practical difference: you are supposed to set time aside to go to the polling station at a given date, and cast your vote on an issue where it is HIGHLY unlikely that you have enough data to make an educated decision. Referendums attempt to distill a complex issue (or a set of issues) into a binary decision. (I find it relevant that binary option trading is a common source of scams: http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); elections attempt to distill a complex set of competing and mutually exclusive issues into a personality contest. Either way the only repeatibly reliable result is that no matter whose side wins, all the voters will eventually feel they have been shafted.
  - mike-cardwell 10y ago
    I don't know why you felt the need to call me dishonest. An election is for choosing who you want to defer decision making power to. Often you only agree with some of the things that person intends to do. The headline actions. And even then, you realise that they may not do some of the things they said they would, and will probably do many other things you never even hear about. A referendum is about answering a specific question. One you have probably never been asked in your life time. And hopefully one where the result will be an actual thing that takes place, e.g Brexit. I find it hard to believe that concepts such as voter fatigue would apply equally to those two considerably different things.
    - bostik 10y ago
      My apologies for that unclear statement. I meant that in this particular issue, I believe you are not being honest with yourself. There are several problems with voting fatigue, but chief among them is that the actual effects of the result are divorced from the outcome. It usually takes months, if not years, for a practical change to propagate from election campaigns to reality. (In the off-chance that an election campaign promise is actually adhered to.) So for most practical purposes a vote taking place has little resemblance to its practical results. We take the expectation of tight feedback loops as a given in UI design. If usability and results from user actions are not coupled, the user will get confused, irritated and eventually will just give up. Why would we expect voting to be any different? It's not just the vote itself that is causing fatigue, it's also the insane mental overload of having to deal with and the need to make sense of the constant (mis)information deluge. For months on end, as a voter you are supposed to digest a barrage of incoming information. It is tiring. And all this still boils down to the need to eventually set time aside go to a polling station to drop a piece of paper into a box, only to see that nothing really changes. Do this often enough and only the activists will be left. The silent majority can not be bothered to care enough.

2muchcoffeeman 10y ago

Right, you said: > What if the political and economic experts disagree with the majority, not just because of their political and economic knowledge, but because they are a very limited demographic and don't even consider many of the things that are important to the people who are not experts in those fields? So my understanding of your idea is, the perspective of experts and general populous is different. If we give people more chances to vote, they will have more opportunity to vote in a way that will address issues important to them. But we already have the opportunity to vote "from our perspective". But a lot of people don't care to. So why would having more opportunities to vote improve the this?

mike-cardwell 10y ago
Because voting in a general election is different to voting in a referendum. A lot of people see voting in general elections as futile, because as far as they can see, all they get from any party is more of the same. Regardless of whether or not that viewpoint is correct, it doesn't apply to referendums. A referendum is about voting for a specific thing and getting it, or not. I think that if we have more referendums, people will start to realise the difference, and take part more.