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How we express our opinions in a democracy needs to re-engineered. It needs to be secure and it needs to matter. Comments anybody can make and that are easily

How we express our opinions in a democracy needs to re-engineered. It needs to be secure and it needs to matter. Comments anybody can make and that are easily ignored are relatively useless. The powers that be aren't going to fix this. If the voters had real, direct power, the lobbyists would not. And you can't put the voters' money directly into your pocket. So we have to do it. We need to create an open-source, secure and low cost solution that shadows an existing state legislature and does a superior job for the voters. And California is the perfect state for it. Let the voters decide the issues or let them "elect" anyone in the state to exercise their vote for them. Use proportional representation. Vote any time. Elect any time. Once this system is proven, voters can decide whether to DUMP the California State Assembly and let the State Senate create and debate all the bills. Then we make it work for all those who can't use or that don't trust the Internet. Once adopted, the same system can be rolled out in other states and maybe some day it will replace the House of Representatives. People have to see it work small before they trust it big.

halflings 9y ago
I would not say that something applied in California, state with the largest population, is an example of "work small before they trust it big". Are you proposing a direct democracy system where the regular election cycle for representatives is obsolete, and people directly vote on issues and/or can elect new representatives at any time?
- stretchwithme 9y ago
  Implementing that in California is a small challenge compared to implementing it for the US. The latter would take years and 2/3 of the states must agree, as it would mean a change to the Constitution.
- stretchwithme 9y ago
  Yes. This breaks down the concentration of power while still enabling people to hand off this task to a trusted delegate. Anybody that is qualified to hold office. Or it could even be a representative from the other house. And you could change who you delegate to any time. Instead of thinking they have a mandate for 4 years, the amount of power a representative actually has would go up and down over time. He or she could be out of power overnight if the voters lose faith. Of course, the Senate would still work the old way.
  - mamon 9y ago
    It does not break concentration of power, only shifts that power from one group of people (politicians) to another (cybercryminals hacking the system). As Stalin famously said: "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes."
    - stretchwithme 9y ago
      That is certainly a risk. But I think it can be mitigated with three step authentication and notifying a voter multiple ways whenever their votes are recorded or an election of representative is made. And we can give people an ID code for their vote. And let them see how their vote was recorded. They could identify themselves at city hall or the state house and punch in the code. Also, if we broke out support for each bill by zip code, it would be easier to assess if fraud has taken place. You could even publish those codes and who cast each vote on every street. Not the actual vote, of course. Just who cast it. We could also use a blockchain to ensure votes cannot be changed after they are cast. In short, I think there are solutions to the hacking problem.
      - filoeleven 9y ago
        Have you evaluated any of the software that exists for this? FollowMyVote looked promising but appears to be defunct. I mentioned DemocracyOS in my other comment but have yet to look into it; it’s at least being talked about and has been deployed in a few places.
        stretchwithme 9y ago
        No, wasn't aware of it. My guess is it is unlikely to really work until the right use case comes along. A city-wide election might be a good place to start.
  - filoeleven 9y ago
    This is delegative democracy, and I’ve been thinking about how to try to get this implemented too. Rather than trying to push it at the state level, which still seems a pretty high barrier for entry, I’m wondering if it’s possible to run as some kind of state or local representative, something like city council, and set up a system so that the rep’s constituents are the ones using it to inform their rep of their wishes. They’d use an app or site to vote on things known to be coming up in the chamber, delegates could make public statements about them. The representative could run either on a platform of “I will be bound by how my constituency votes” or “I will not be bound, but I better give you a damn good reason to vote contrary to my constituency if I want to be elected again.” DemocracyOS and other open source tools are starting to appear that should make the implementation of any number of these systems fairly easy, though of course there’s still security and ID verification to contend with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy

halflings 9y ago

I would not say that something applied in California, state with the largest population, is an example of "work small before they trust it big". Are you proposing a direct democracy system where the regular election cycle for representatives is obsolete, and people directly vote on issues and/or can elect new representatives at any time?

stretchwithme 9y ago
Implementing that in California is a small challenge compared to implementing it for the US. The latter would take years and 2/3 of the states must agree, as it would mean a change to the Constitution.
stretchwithme 9y ago
Yes. This breaks down the concentration of power while still enabling people to hand off this task to a trusted delegate. Anybody that is qualified to hold office. Or it could even be a representative from the other house. And you could change who you delegate to any time. Instead of thinking they have a mandate for 4 years, the amount of power a representative actually has would go up and down over time. He or she could be out of power overnight if the voters lose faith. Of course, the Senate would still work the old way.
- mamon 9y ago
  It does not break concentration of power, only shifts that power from one group of people (politicians) to another (cybercryminals hacking the system). As Stalin famously said: "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes."
  - stretchwithme 9y ago
    That is certainly a risk. But I think it can be mitigated with three step authentication and notifying a voter multiple ways whenever their votes are recorded or an election of representative is made. And we can give people an ID code for their vote. And let them see how their vote was recorded. They could identify themselves at city hall or the state house and punch in the code. Also, if we broke out support for each bill by zip code, it would be easier to assess if fraud has taken place. You could even publish those codes and who cast each vote on every street. Not the actual vote, of course. Just who cast it. We could also use a blockchain to ensure votes cannot be changed after they are cast. In short, I think there are solutions to the hacking problem.
    - filoeleven 9y ago
      Have you evaluated any of the software that exists for this? FollowMyVote looked promising but appears to be defunct. I mentioned DemocracyOS in my other comment but have yet to look into it; it’s at least being talked about and has been deployed in a few places.
      - stretchwithme 9y ago
        No, wasn't aware of it. My guess is it is unlikely to really work until the right use case comes along. A city-wide election might be a good place to start.
- filoeleven 9y ago
  This is delegative democracy, and I’ve been thinking about how to try to get this implemented too. Rather than trying to push it at the state level, which still seems a pretty high barrier for entry, I’m wondering if it’s possible to run as some kind of state or local representative, something like city council, and set up a system so that the rep’s constituents are the ones using it to inform their rep of their wishes. They’d use an app or site to vote on things known to be coming up in the chamber, delegates could make public statements about them. The representative could run either on a platform of “I will be bound by how my constituency votes” or “I will not be bound, but I better give you a damn good reason to vote contrary to my constituency if I want to be elected again.” DemocracyOS and other open source tools are starting to appear that should make the implementation of any number of these systems fairly easy, though of course there’s still security and ID verification to contend with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy