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Ask HN: Instead of picking a party, why can’t we vote on issues

58 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

Why do we need political parties? Many issues are partisan and many more bi partisan. Instead of pitting 2 or more parties against each other, why can’t select the issues we want to be implemented and politicians with no party affiliations to implement them? This way we can have elections maybe even once a year for issues rather than for parties and we can track issues. Spokesperson can be a rotating head of state. Isn’t it a better way to govern ourselves?

austincheney 6y ago
So, I am going to put political parties aside and focus on the purely American absurdities. * We live in a two party system. China has one party only and others are not allowed. Most countries have multiple polical parties. In the US it comes down to money. It take a huge amount of money to become a political party with access to various jurisdictions and media influence which is more challenging than it sounds because funding is required via donations only and donations are limited by campaign finance laws. A two party system is limiting to us versus them arguments, which are often invalid and absurd. * People don’t pick presidential candidates. Political parties do. This occurs via primary elections that differ from the general election that really matters. Primaries are scattered so that political parties can experimentally field test their candidates among their primary constituents. These constituents are often not the general voting body comprised of moderate people. This is often how candidates emerge that are generally unpopular and/or incompetent, because it’s a reflection of party tooling opposed to actual voter concerns. * Even with the support and nomination of a political party candidates need more money to compete. Generally the candidate that raises the most money performs better. Therefore the ingredients to become president are party nomination and fund raising.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  I can’t get over the amount of money spent on elections. If we give everyone an unique national ID and enable online/digital voting on issues, I feel we can cut a lot of bloat and move things faster.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    You don’t even need that. Make the primaries the only election. People choosing their favorite candidate without any filter and put all the primaries on the same day.
    - quickthrower2 6y ago
      That’s be pretty advantageous for the sitting president. Unless there is a preference system.
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        I guess my other question was: why do we even need a president? Or a head of state? Why not a board? Corporations are run better than countries. We could have a Wall Street like ticker for issues that needs votes. A public channel for everyone to get an opp to pitch their POV.
  - munchbunny 6y ago
    If we give everyone an unique national ID and enable online/digital voting on issues, I feel we can cut a lot of bloat and move things faster. Even though I dislike the US's two-party system, your suggestion just shifts the spending to other places. Cambridge Analytica didn't need political parties in the system in order to be effective.
- TheAsprngHacker 6y ago
  The two-party system is not a consequence of the lack of access to money. It is a consequence of the first-past-the-post system, which will always trend towards two parties (as a matter of game theory). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law. The problem of primaries selecting for extremists could be partially alleviated with ranked-choice voting, so an extreme candidate with a significant minority of supporters can't win against a divided field of moderates. This is how Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination and how Sanders almost won the 2020 Democratic nomination before the establishment candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden. Or, we could try open primaries so independents can give input on the desired candidate.
  - Someone 6y ago
    India has first past the post. Over 25 different parties got a seat in 2019 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_general_election) I think having political alliances (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_alliance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_alliance) helps in that. Now, whether that’s a good idea is debatable. https://web.archive.org/web/20081220163843/http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12749771 https://web.archive.org/web/20081220163843/http://www.econom...: “Of the 522 members of India’s current parliament, 120 are facing criminal charges; around 40 of these are accused of serious crimes, including murder and rape. Most Indian politicians are presumed to be corrupt, which is less surprising. In India’s poor and fractious society patronage politics is inevitable“
- danbolt 6y ago
  One thing that has surprised me about the US is the lack of political parties with regional interests given how large and diverse the place is. Or, having grown up in Canada, it wasn't uncommon[1][2][3] to see a political party have its mandate and goals being focused around the interests of people to a particular region. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Canada [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_Québécois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_Québécois [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Farmers_of_Alberta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Farmers_of_Alberta
deleted 6y ago
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trinovantes 6y ago
This is under the assumption that the voters will have an informed opinion on the issues. With how much the internet have created echo chambers, I highly doubt this will be possible. In reality, I think the results will be determined by whichever interest groups that can mobilize more supporters through clickbait propaganda. Even if they eventually get caught, does it matter after the policies get passed? I'd rather see changes to the system to allow/incentivize good-faith leaders to prosper. All I want is for my leaders to make decisions based on science and taking into account of _every_ stakeholder instead of just their corporate donators. Right now, too many politicians (at least the ones that affect me) get away with "undemocratic" decisions for personal gain without repercussions.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Decisions made by science may be biased against certain groups. Let’s imagine there is an AI ‘guardian’ decision maker. Who is it to say that it’s statistical/scientific methods will be acceptable to individuals. I am reminded of Asimov’s short story “Franchise”
alexmingoia 6y ago
We can. Some states have direct democracy. California allows voting on anything directly. If a proposed law gets a certain number of signatures it goes on the ballot. California voters could propose and pass a law requiring all new laws to be put to statewide vote.
deleted 6y ago
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aaron695 6y ago
There's no evidence that would work. The evidence is you need continuity. Companies have employees for instance. Everything little thing is not contracted out.
eucryphia 6y ago
People are already free to group together, pool their money and persue a common goal and solve an issue, you vote with your wallet. However, if you intend to use the government's monopoly on the use of violence to force other people to do something or pay for it, you'll need to move to another country which doesn't have a constitution that expressly forbids that and allows its citizens to arm themselves to protect themselves from this sort of coercion.
mycall 6y ago
Some people have been working on a liquid democracy [0] platform, allowing people to vote directly per bill or delegate their vote to a representative, which they can change anytime they wish. This is a technology problem to solve as distributed zero-trust isn't an easy problem to scale. Some attempts have been with using cryptocurrency per vote, but I haven't seen anything new in a few years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy#:~:text=Liquid%20democracy%20is%20a%20form,or%20proposed%20popular%2Dcontrol%20apparatuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy#:~:text=Liqui....
- bcherny 6y ago
  Zero trust + distributed consensus seem like overkill for this. Why not use the govt as an authoritative record keeper?
duxup 6y ago
I would suggest looking at CA's referendum system to see how people really aren't good at voting on things with larger implications. Arguably CA's wonky tax system has some of it's roots in an effort to keep taxes low, and to some extent backfired long term. For one off items legalizing marijuana or so with limited repercussions on other things, those kind of referendums would seem well suited. But anything else voters I suspect would be happy to vote to eat and have their cake at the same time.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  I guess that’s democracy?
  - duxup 6y ago
    Representative democracy tends to deal with those things a bit better. Folks making decision A, B, and C might know something about those things and have to balance them.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      County seats make decisions for cities. State makes decisions for counties. For now at least, I think state is independent to an extent from the center. Example: Alameda county decides if city of Hayward should build more units than the denizens of Hayward itself. This could be an example of regional governance. Do we need more decentralization and local governance rather than regional governance?
      - duxup 6y ago
        I think that's a different question compared to just direct voting on issues and representative democracy. Layers of government do have their uses. The local counties in my area make larger transit decisions together via another organization, it's something that would be hard to make if the cities had to get together to make each deal.
  - barumi 6y ago
swiley 6y ago
Many European countries seem to solve this using proportional representation. I'd love to see a state give that a shot.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
I don’t think more direct democracy is actually a solution. Most people are uninformed on the issues and frankly many civil liberties would evaporate if left up to the mob. Instead we need a better way to get expertise and accountability from our representatives. A TV show host billionaire shouldn’t be the president in the first place, but that’s the current reality of a news-media driven voting system.
- salamimonger 6y ago
  Look at it this way. With more direct democracy, people can finally get what they (f'ing) deserve, and they'll have no one to blame but themselves. No more hiding behind the politicians they voted for. And even then, people still refuse to hold these people in power accountable for stuff they do. Maybe we need to hold the citizens accountable, and only then will we see sensible legislation at some point in time.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I still don't see that holding the citizens accountable. How many citizens write their reps, research a topic from an objective perspective, understand law and legal concepts, are trained in logic, vote, or even have time for these things. Even with record turnout this year (about 145 million), that's still about 90 million people short of the estimated number of eligible voters (235 million). If they aren't involved in the easiest activities now (voting), why would we expect them to participate in the difficult and time consuming activities (research, voting on specific legislation, etc)? Also, subjecting the intelligent and engaged people to the whims of the mob would not be what they deserve.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - salamimonger 6y ago
      What I'm saying is, if the majority of people in a country that are willing to vote, want to vote in stupid legislation/policy that screws them over economically or whatever, they got what they (f'ing) deserved. Next time, they'll rethink their decisions and in theory, more people will turn out to prevent that from happening again.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
Political parties and news orgs benefit from having ½ of Americans stoked with animosity toward the other ½. As evidence I offer that the most obvious yet never-offered solution to 2016 election meddling is a less malleable voter.
- PaulKeeble 6y ago
  We seem to be deficient as a species and highly susceptible to dehumanising mechanisms. Propaganda is surprising effective especially given its so obvious. One thing I also notice is it seems that the effect rarely goes past about 40% of the population, which is only an issue in a First past the post voting system or in a country where voting has been suppressed so decreasing numbers of people participate.
giardini 6y ago
In a way it's a shame that we don't have something like the Roman Caesars or even like the Chinese Communist Party structure with a leader like Xi. If we did, we would have no successful enemies and could easily crush all opponents beneath our heel like insects(yes, we're that capable!). But we're a republic, so we're always chewing on each others' legs and scrambling to get to the monetary/political feeding trough. - "Et tu, Brute!" the words of Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, upon being stabbed by his close friend Brutus in the Roman Senate): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F
i_dont_know_ 6y ago
So, this could be done in 1 of 2 ways: 1. There would be detailed ballot initiatives that contain full legal proposals, details of their execution, budget, etc. and voters simply vote "yes" or "no" to them. We see this as referendums and ballot initiatives. When used sparingly for "big" questions, this works well, but when used routinely, it puts a pretty huge burden on voters to be continuously informed. Take the California ballot this year. There was a ballot initiative about regulating kidney dialysis procedures. If it were the only ballot initiative, I might have had time to research it, discover the motivations around it (is it because of safety, or protectionism for an industry?) the consequences (does it need tighter regulation? do those regulation costs fall on the consumer?) etc. But, there were like 20 of these things on the ballot. At some point, it becomes actual work to figure out all of them and research them thoroughly enough to know what the consequence of your vote would actually be. Ideally, you'd have some sort of agent working on your behalf, sifting through the consequences and political motivations, and navigating the 'yes/no' votes in a way that aligns with your ideal outcomes. This is, theoretically, what politicians already do :) 2. Instead of exact legislation, you specify a general intent. Say that you were generally pro-environmentalism. All things being equal, you'd like things to go more towards environmental preservation, ending climate change etc. Ok, cool, but now there's TONS of room for interpretation. Extreme case, as executor of this mandate, do I have carte blanche to do anything as long as it decreases the carbon footprint? Anything? Induce a famine to reduce usage and consumption of goods? You'd probably need a more thorough statement of general intent and sentiment. Political parties (outside the weird US system) basically have this. They release a document, usually called a Party Program, which outlines their philosophies and intents. Theoretically, you're voting for the party and the person you elect is someone who is ideologically dedicated to realizing the intents of the shared Party Program to the best of their ability. This system works really well when there's a diverse collection of parties with different ideologies, different levels of concrete plans to realize these ideologies, and paths available for such parties to gain legitimate power and sway in the government. The US 'parties' are missing quite a bit of the above, but I personally think having many parties and fixing our voting systems so such parties can eventually be in congress/the presidency would create a system where issues that people actually care about would be implemented (roughly) in ways they would approve of... at least much moreso than they are now in the US.
tootahe45 6y ago
Because then people will have to find hobbies and the recreational panic industry will go out of business?
gbin 6y ago
The problem is that you need someone to drive a coherent proposition ie. Select the subjects that are meaningful for an uneducated crowd to vote on. Otherwise, someone will propose to vote for "x millions for everyone!" and it might have some success...
throwawaysea 6y ago
I don’t accept the arguments against direct voting on issues. Often those against direct voting are also the same people who claim increased turnout and reduced barriers to voting will lead to better outcomes and is inherently “more democratic”. And yet they arbitrarily draw the line there and are against direct voting on issues. You can’t have it both ways.
Yan-solucracy 6y ago
There are a lot of open source apps to implement actual, real democracy : https://decidim.org/ https://decidim.org/ , https://consulproject.org/en/ https://consulproject.org/en/ , and it's already implemented in a lot of cities and countries. Another interesting concept is liquid democracy : https://liquidfeedback.org/ https://liquidfeedback.org/ ,adresses most of the problems mentioned in the other comments. Although, using an app for democracy is ignoring the digital divide. There HAS to be something similar done in real life, otherwise you're leaving 50 to 90% people out of the conversation depending on which country you live in.
cjfd 6y ago
I have sympathy for this because my particular combination of political preferences does not fit any party. And I am not even in the US where the choice is, let us say, rater one-dimensional. The problem with it is that one might end up with the people voting for, among other things, more generous unemployment benefits, many nice infrastructure projects, lower taxes, and a balanced budget. I guess one could attempt to solve this by putting a price tag on what people vote for as in 'we have this nice project but taxes would increase from this to that amount'. Of course, when actually doing it the project would go over budget and what do you do then?
- foolmeonce 6y ago
  If the people are not educated and skeptical, a political party offers impossible combinations then gets to use its real priorities when it controls the government.. Having votes when new decisions are made means the people eventually vote directly on these priorities instead of giving power to someone who has manipulated them.
wcerfgba 6y ago
I would like to see more systems based around participatory democracy, like citizens' assemblies. With a CA, sortition is used to select a sample of the population, and they come together along with subject matter experts to do research and shape the policy itself. I view the problems with our democracies in terms of information theory. Even if you move from representative to direct democracy and people can vote on issues, a vote is still a very small amount of information, and the bandwidth from the people to the policy-makers is tiny. Contrast that with citizens' assemblies and the bandwidth is much wider, because it democratizes the policy construction process and allows people to discuss the policy, instead of just signalling a single bit (yes/no).
redis_mlc 6y ago
If you're referring to the US, our problem isn't democracy, it's the lack of policy at the broadest and highest levels. Every interview with successful businessmen mentions that as the most obvious and crucial problem. The US used to be a world-leader in effective policy, which you can see from our victories in WW2 and the Marshall Plan. But when you look at the disaster that ACA was/is, the CDC turtling during COVID-19, the lack of border enforcement and the CCP encroachment and elite capture, it's clear that the people we elected for the past few decades haven't done their jobs. The BLM riots aren't really isolated incidents - even our mayors can't devise a policy to save their own downtowns.
em-bee 6y ago
voting on issues is not the only alternative to the current system. the problems today stem from the way parties work. their only function seems to be to pit candidates against each other. consider just abolishing the parties and making each candidate independent. toeing the party line would no longer happen, and elected representatives be free to really represent their constituents instead of being forced to compromise in order to not loose their party affiliation and their chance at being reelected. members of the house and senate (or your countries respective bodies) could collaborate on issues based on their own choices and not influenced by some party cabal that is pulling strings in the background. another issue is lobbying. that should be completely outlawed, and any gift to an elected representative should be sanctioned as bribery. there are more things that can be done to make the system more fair and actually represent its people, but start with those two and things will already improve dramatically, because energy no longer goes into parties fighting each other.
username3 6y ago
Voting on issues isn’t enough. There’s no easy way to hold our representatives accountable. We need to track the government’s progress on what they’re doing for the issues. What does Netflix use to fire people? See the ideas in this discussion on how to solve politics. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24263815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24263815
bjourne 6y ago
It would give special interest groups a lot of power. A lot of people are against subsidies in general but for most of them it is not a core issue. Now suppose there were three issues you had to vote for; subsidies to group A, subsidies to group B, and subsidies to group C. Most people won't care and won't show up for these votes (no one except for politicians have time to vote on hundreds of issues every year). However, a large number of people in group A will vote for subsidies for them, as will people in group B and C.
matt_s 6y ago
Most people (as in statistical majority, not HN readers) don't read anything about issues and just vote with their emotions or who they like or for whatever party they identify with. In the US, guns and abortion are the common "issues" the politicians use to divide even though those are things that are likely to not change on a federal level. A better way to govern ourselves is to have term limits across the board - legislature (Senate and House) and judiciary (federal judges and Supreme Court). That would be a check/balance against people becoming too powerful.
stephenr 6y ago
In some countries parties put up a platform of policies before an election, voters learn about each party platform and vote based on the policies they agree with most. If people actually did the most basic of research about what each party intends to do (and how they have historically behaved when elected) rather than making everything a personality contest, then just maybe they’d get representation that puts forward policies they believe in. And before anyone claims it: no “the opposite of $otherTeam” isn’t a policy platform and neither is “own the $ideologyNickname”
jfengel 6y ago
You get political parties because you are a minority of 1. In order to get anything done, you need allies. Most people simply don't care about the things that matter to you. It's not that they're opposed, but that they are apathetic, and it's certainly not their top priority. Even if they roughly agree, they almost certainly prefer some other version of it. A party is a way of trying to reach a majority by putting a selection of issues together that you can all at least agree to, if not favor. You hammer out one acceptable version of legislation: not anybody's favorite, but one nearly everybody in the group can at least tolerate. The less they like it, the more they will need some encouragement to vote for it -- which includes your promise to vote on their favorite thing. Every proposal to change the system seems to be predicated on the idea that if only your idea could be presented in isolation, people would leap at the opportunity to pass it. That's simply not the case. Most people simply do not care, and any effort to make them care is going to be some variant on a political party. Democracy is, at core, about getting large groups of people to compromise. No variant of democracy absolves you of the need to negotiate with people who at best don't care about you. There are many, many different ways to govern ourselves, but none of them will give you that sense of purity you seek, where you get to vote on your favorite issue and then ignore everybody else's. It's fundamentally messy and will always, in the language familiar to HN readers, be full of "smells". Systems predicated on eliminating the smells, rather than living with them, are always going to be toys.

58 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

austincheney 6y ago

So, I am going to put political parties aside and focus on the purely American absurdities. * We live in a two party system. China has one party only and others are not allowed. Most countries have multiple polical parties. In the US it comes down to money. It take a huge amount of money to become a political party with access to various jurisdictions and media influence which is more challenging than it sounds because funding is required via donations only and donations are limited by campaign finance laws. A two party system is limiting to us versus them arguments, which are often invalid and absurd. * People don’t pick presidential candidates. Political parties do. This occurs via primary elections that differ from the general election that really matters. Primaries are scattered so that political parties can experimentally field test their candidates among their primary constituents. These constituents are often not the general voting body comprised of moderate people. This is often how candidates emerge that are generally unpopular and/or incompetent, because it’s a reflection of party tooling opposed to actual voter concerns. * Even with the support and nomination of a political party candidates need more money to compete. Generally the candidate that raises the most money performs better. Therefore the ingredients to become president are party nomination and fund raising.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
I can’t get over the amount of money spent on elections. If we give everyone an unique national ID and enable online/digital voting on issues, I feel we can cut a lot of bloat and move things faster.
- austincheney 6y ago
  You don’t even need that. Make the primaries the only election. People choosing their favorite candidate without any filter and put all the primaries on the same day.
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    That’s be pretty advantageous for the sitting president. Unless there is a preference system.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      I guess my other question was: why do we even need a president? Or a head of state? Why not a board? Corporations are run better than countries. We could have a Wall Street like ticker for issues that needs votes. A public channel for everyone to get an opp to pitch their POV.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  If we give everyone an unique national ID and enable online/digital voting on issues, I feel we can cut a lot of bloat and move things faster. Even though I dislike the US's two-party system, your suggestion just shifts the spending to other places. Cambridge Analytica didn't need political parties in the system in order to be effective.
TheAsprngHacker 6y ago
The two-party system is not a consequence of the lack of access to money. It is a consequence of the first-past-the-post system, which will always trend towards two parties (as a matter of game theory). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law. The problem of primaries selecting for extremists could be partially alleviated with ranked-choice voting, so an extreme candidate with a significant minority of supporters can't win against a divided field of moderates. This is how Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination and how Sanders almost won the 2020 Democratic nomination before the establishment candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden. Or, we could try open primaries so independents can give input on the desired candidate.
- Someone 6y ago
  India has first past the post. Over 25 different parties got a seat in 2019 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_general_election) I think having political alliances (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_alliance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_alliance) helps in that. Now, whether that’s a good idea is debatable. https://web.archive.org/web/20081220163843/http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12749771 https://web.archive.org/web/20081220163843/http://www.econom...: “Of the 522 members of India’s current parliament, 120 are facing criminal charges; around 40 of these are accused of serious crimes, including murder and rape. Most Indian politicians are presumed to be corrupt, which is less surprising. In India’s poor and fractious society patronage politics is inevitable“
danbolt 6y ago
One thing that has surprised me about the US is the lack of political parties with regional interests given how large and diverse the place is. Or, having grown up in Canada, it wasn't uncommon[1][2][3] to see a political party have its mandate and goals being focused around the interests of people to a particular region. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_of_Canada [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_Québécois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_Québécois [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Farmers_of_Alberta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Farmers_of_Alberta

deleted 6y ago

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trinovantes 6y ago

This is under the assumption that the voters will have an informed opinion on the issues. With how much the internet have created echo chambers, I highly doubt this will be possible. In reality, I think the results will be determined by whichever interest groups that can mobilize more supporters through clickbait propaganda. Even if they eventually get caught, does it matter after the policies get passed? I'd rather see changes to the system to allow/incentivize good-faith leaders to prosper. All I want is for my leaders to make decisions based on science and taking into account of _every_ stakeholder instead of just their corporate donators. Right now, too many politicians (at least the ones that affect me) get away with "undemocratic" decisions for personal gain without repercussions.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Decisions made by science may be biased against certain groups. Let’s imagine there is an AI ‘guardian’ decision maker. Who is it to say that it’s statistical/scientific methods will be acceptable to individuals. I am reminded of Asimov’s short story “Franchise”

alexmingoia 6y ago

We can. Some states have direct democracy. California allows voting on anything directly. If a proposed law gets a certain number of signatures it goes on the ballot. California voters could propose and pass a law requiring all new laws to be put to statewide vote.

deleted 6y ago

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aaron695 6y ago

There's no evidence that would work. The evidence is you need continuity. Companies have employees for instance. Everything little thing is not contracted out.

eucryphia 6y ago

People are already free to group together, pool their money and persue a common goal and solve an issue, you vote with your wallet. However, if you intend to use the government's monopoly on the use of violence to force other people to do something or pay for it, you'll need to move to another country which doesn't have a constitution that expressly forbids that and allows its citizens to arm themselves to protect themselves from this sort of coercion.

mycall 6y ago

Some people have been working on a liquid democracy [0] platform, allowing people to vote directly per bill or delegate their vote to a representative, which they can change anytime they wish. This is a technology problem to solve as distributed zero-trust isn't an easy problem to scale. Some attempts have been with using cryptocurrency per vote, but I haven't seen anything new in a few years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy#:~:text=Liquid%20democracy%20is%20a%20form,or%20proposed%20popular%2Dcontrol%20apparatuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy#:~:text=Liqui....

bcherny 6y ago
Zero trust + distributed consensus seem like overkill for this. Why not use the govt as an authoritative record keeper?

duxup 6y ago

I would suggest looking at CA's referendum system to see how people really aren't good at voting on things with larger implications. Arguably CA's wonky tax system has some of it's roots in an effort to keep taxes low, and to some extent backfired long term. For one off items legalizing marijuana or so with limited repercussions on other things, those kind of referendums would seem well suited. But anything else voters I suspect would be happy to vote to eat and have their cake at the same time.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
I guess that’s democracy?
- duxup 6y ago
  Representative democracy tends to deal with those things a bit better. Folks making decision A, B, and C might know something about those things and have to balance them.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    County seats make decisions for cities. State makes decisions for counties. For now at least, I think state is independent to an extent from the center. Example: Alameda county decides if city of Hayward should build more units than the denizens of Hayward itself. This could be an example of regional governance. Do we need more decentralization and local governance rather than regional governance?
    - duxup 6y ago
      I think that's a different question compared to just direct voting on issues and representative democracy. Layers of government do have their uses. The local counties in my area make larger transit decisions together via another organization, it's something that would be hard to make if the cities had to get together to make each deal.
- barumi 6y ago

swiley 6y ago

Many European countries seem to solve this using proportional representation. I'd love to see a state give that a shot.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

I don’t think more direct democracy is actually a solution. Most people are uninformed on the issues and frankly many civil liberties would evaporate if left up to the mob. Instead we need a better way to get expertise and accountability from our representatives. A TV show host billionaire shouldn’t be the president in the first place, but that’s the current reality of a news-media driven voting system.

salamimonger 6y ago
Look at it this way. With more direct democracy, people can finally get what they (f'ing) deserve, and they'll have no one to blame but themselves. No more hiding behind the politicians they voted for. And even then, people still refuse to hold these people in power accountable for stuff they do. Maybe we need to hold the citizens accountable, and only then will we see sensible legislation at some point in time.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I still don't see that holding the citizens accountable. How many citizens write their reps, research a topic from an objective perspective, understand law and legal concepts, are trained in logic, vote, or even have time for these things. Even with record turnout this year (about 145 million), that's still about 90 million people short of the estimated number of eligible voters (235 million). If they aren't involved in the easiest activities now (voting), why would we expect them to participate in the difficult and time consuming activities (research, voting on specific legislation, etc)? Also, subjecting the intelligent and engaged people to the whims of the mob would not be what they deserve.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - salamimonger 6y ago
    What I'm saying is, if the majority of people in a country that are willing to vote, want to vote in stupid legislation/policy that screws them over economically or whatever, they got what they (f'ing) deserved. Next time, they'll rethink their decisions and in theory, more people will turn out to prevent that from happening again.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

Political parties and news orgs benefit from having ½ of Americans stoked with animosity toward the other ½. As evidence I offer that the most obvious yet never-offered solution to 2016 election meddling is a less malleable voter.

PaulKeeble 6y ago
We seem to be deficient as a species and highly susceptible to dehumanising mechanisms. Propaganda is surprising effective especially given its so obvious. One thing I also notice is it seems that the effect rarely goes past about 40% of the population, which is only an issue in a First past the post voting system or in a country where voting has been suppressed so decreasing numbers of people participate.

giardini 6y ago

In a way it's a shame that we don't have something like the Roman Caesars or even like the Chinese Communist Party structure with a leader like Xi. If we did, we would have no successful enemies and could easily crush all opponents beneath our heel like insects(yes, we're that capable!). But we're a republic, so we're always chewing on each others' legs and scrambling to get to the monetary/political feeding trough. - "Et tu, Brute!" the words of Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, upon being stabbed by his close friend Brutus in the Roman Senate): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_tu,_Brute%3F

i_dont_know_ 6y ago

So, this could be done in 1 of 2 ways: 1. There would be detailed ballot initiatives that contain full legal proposals, details of their execution, budget, etc. and voters simply vote "yes" or "no" to them. We see this as referendums and ballot initiatives. When used sparingly for "big" questions, this works well, but when used routinely, it puts a pretty huge burden on voters to be continuously informed. Take the California ballot this year. There was a ballot initiative about regulating kidney dialysis procedures. If it were the only ballot initiative, I might have had time to research it, discover the motivations around it (is it because of safety, or protectionism for an industry?) the consequences (does it need tighter regulation? do those regulation costs fall on the consumer?) etc. But, there were like 20 of these things on the ballot. At some point, it becomes actual work to figure out all of them and research them thoroughly enough to know what the consequence of your vote would actually be. Ideally, you'd have some sort of agent working on your behalf, sifting through the consequences and political motivations, and navigating the 'yes/no' votes in a way that aligns with your ideal outcomes. This is, theoretically, what politicians already do :) 2. Instead of exact legislation, you specify a general intent. Say that you were generally pro-environmentalism. All things being equal, you'd like things to go more towards environmental preservation, ending climate change etc. Ok, cool, but now there's TONS of room for interpretation. Extreme case, as executor of this mandate, do I have carte blanche to do anything as long as it decreases the carbon footprint? Anything? Induce a famine to reduce usage and consumption of goods? You'd probably need a more thorough statement of general intent and sentiment. Political parties (outside the weird US system) basically have this. They release a document, usually called a Party Program, which outlines their philosophies and intents. Theoretically, you're voting for the party and the person you elect is someone who is ideologically dedicated to realizing the intents of the shared Party Program to the best of their ability. This system works really well when there's a diverse collection of parties with different ideologies, different levels of concrete plans to realize these ideologies, and paths available for such parties to gain legitimate power and sway in the government. The US 'parties' are missing quite a bit of the above, but I personally think having many parties and fixing our voting systems so such parties can eventually be in congress/the presidency would create a system where issues that people actually care about would be implemented (roughly) in ways they would approve of... at least much moreso than they are now in the US.

tootahe45 6y ago

Because then people will have to find hobbies and the recreational panic industry will go out of business?

gbin 6y ago

The problem is that you need someone to drive a coherent proposition ie. Select the subjects that are meaningful for an uneducated crowd to vote on. Otherwise, someone will propose to vote for "x millions for everyone!" and it might have some success...

throwawaysea 6y ago

I don’t accept the arguments against direct voting on issues. Often those against direct voting are also the same people who claim increased turnout and reduced barriers to voting will lead to better outcomes and is inherently “more democratic”. And yet they arbitrarily draw the line there and are against direct voting on issues. You can’t have it both ways.

Yan-solucracy 6y ago

There are a lot of open source apps to implement actual, real democracy : https://decidim.org/ https://decidim.org/ , https://consulproject.org/en/ https://consulproject.org/en/ , and it's already implemented in a lot of cities and countries. Another interesting concept is liquid democracy : https://liquidfeedback.org/ https://liquidfeedback.org/ ,adresses most of the problems mentioned in the other comments. Although, using an app for democracy is ignoring the digital divide. There HAS to be something similar done in real life, otherwise you're leaving 50 to 90% people out of the conversation depending on which country you live in.

cjfd 6y ago

I have sympathy for this because my particular combination of political preferences does not fit any party. And I am not even in the US where the choice is, let us say, rater one-dimensional. The problem with it is that one might end up with the people voting for, among other things, more generous unemployment benefits, many nice infrastructure projects, lower taxes, and a balanced budget. I guess one could attempt to solve this by putting a price tag on what people vote for as in 'we have this nice project but taxes would increase from this to that amount'. Of course, when actually doing it the project would go over budget and what do you do then?

foolmeonce 6y ago
If the people are not educated and skeptical, a political party offers impossible combinations then gets to use its real priorities when it controls the government.. Having votes when new decisions are made means the people eventually vote directly on these priorities instead of giving power to someone who has manipulated them.

wcerfgba 6y ago

I would like to see more systems based around participatory democracy, like citizens' assemblies. With a CA, sortition is used to select a sample of the population, and they come together along with subject matter experts to do research and shape the policy itself. I view the problems with our democracies in terms of information theory. Even if you move from representative to direct democracy and people can vote on issues, a vote is still a very small amount of information, and the bandwidth from the people to the policy-makers is tiny. Contrast that with citizens' assemblies and the bandwidth is much wider, because it democratizes the policy construction process and allows people to discuss the policy, instead of just signalling a single bit (yes/no).

redis_mlc 6y ago

If you're referring to the US, our problem isn't democracy, it's the lack of policy at the broadest and highest levels. Every interview with successful businessmen mentions that as the most obvious and crucial problem. The US used to be a world-leader in effective policy, which you can see from our victories in WW2 and the Marshall Plan. But when you look at the disaster that ACA was/is, the CDC turtling during COVID-19, the lack of border enforcement and the CCP encroachment and elite capture, it's clear that the people we elected for the past few decades haven't done their jobs. The BLM riots aren't really isolated incidents - even our mayors can't devise a policy to save their own downtowns.

em-bee 6y ago

voting on issues is not the only alternative to the current system. the problems today stem from the way parties work. their only function seems to be to pit candidates against each other. consider just abolishing the parties and making each candidate independent. toeing the party line would no longer happen, and elected representatives be free to really represent their constituents instead of being forced to compromise in order to not loose their party affiliation and their chance at being reelected. members of the house and senate (or your countries respective bodies) could collaborate on issues based on their own choices and not influenced by some party cabal that is pulling strings in the background. another issue is lobbying. that should be completely outlawed, and any gift to an elected representative should be sanctioned as bribery. there are more things that can be done to make the system more fair and actually represent its people, but start with those two and things will already improve dramatically, because energy no longer goes into parties fighting each other.

username3 6y ago

Voting on issues isn’t enough. There’s no easy way to hold our representatives accountable. We need to track the government’s progress on what they’re doing for the issues. What does Netflix use to fire people? See the ideas in this discussion on how to solve politics. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24263815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24263815

bjourne 6y ago

It would give special interest groups a lot of power. A lot of people are against subsidies in general but for most of them it is not a core issue. Now suppose there were three issues you had to vote for; subsidies to group A, subsidies to group B, and subsidies to group C. Most people won't care and won't show up for these votes (no one except for politicians have time to vote on hundreds of issues every year). However, a large number of people in group A will vote for subsidies for them, as will people in group B and C.

matt_s 6y ago

Most people (as in statistical majority, not HN readers) don't read anything about issues and just vote with their emotions or who they like or for whatever party they identify with. In the US, guns and abortion are the common "issues" the politicians use to divide even though those are things that are likely to not change on a federal level. A better way to govern ourselves is to have term limits across the board - legislature (Senate and House) and judiciary (federal judges and Supreme Court). That would be a check/balance against people becoming too powerful.

stephenr 6y ago

In some countries parties put up a platform of policies before an election, voters learn about each party platform and vote based on the policies they agree with most. If people actually did the most basic of research about what each party intends to do (and how they have historically behaved when elected) rather than making everything a personality contest, then just maybe they’d get representation that puts forward policies they believe in. And before anyone claims it: no “the opposite of $otherTeam” isn’t a policy platform and neither is “own the $ideologyNickname”

jfengel 6y ago

You get political parties because you are a minority of 1. In order to get anything done, you need allies. Most people simply don't care about the things that matter to you. It's not that they're opposed, but that they are apathetic, and it's certainly not their top priority. Even if they roughly agree, they almost certainly prefer some other version of it. A party is a way of trying to reach a majority by putting a selection of issues together that you can all at least agree to, if not favor. You hammer out one acceptable version of legislation: not anybody's favorite, but one nearly everybody in the group can at least tolerate. The less they like it, the more they will need some encouragement to vote for it -- which includes your promise to vote on their favorite thing. Every proposal to change the system seems to be predicated on the idea that if only your idea could be presented in isolation, people would leap at the opportunity to pass it. That's simply not the case. Most people simply do not care, and any effort to make them care is going to be some variant on a political party. Democracy is, at core, about getting large groups of people to compromise. No variant of democracy absolves you of the need to negotiate with people who at best don't care about you. There are many, many different ways to govern ourselves, but none of them will give you that sense of purity you seek, where you get to vote on your favorite issue and then ignore everybody else's. It's fundamentally messy and will always, in the language familiar to HN readers, be full of "smells". Systems predicated on eliminating the smells, rather than living with them, are always going to be toys.