3 ms·

Agree strongly with voting for individual ideas/policies rather than parties. I don’t like to think about the human years devoted to out-manoeuvring another par

Agree strongly with voting for individual ideas/policies rather than parties. I don’t like to think about the human years devoted to out-manoeuvring another party over working towards positive outcomes. I’d appreciate anyone that could point me in the direction of this being done in the past or ideas about how it could be implemented.

not_knuth 6y ago
I believe the Swiss Referendum model is similar to what you are describing [0]. However, it has quite a few issues as well. The three biggest ones I can think of are: 1. Voting on single issues requires very engaged citizens that understand how their voting decisions impact the bigger scheme of things. Essentially it leads to the pitfalls of single-issue politics [1]. Political parties on the other hand, allow people to sort of vote for a direction. Ian Shapiro describes this phenomenon [2], but it is a long read. 2. The transition to and bootstrapping of such a system is very hard. It may work well in Switzerland, but that's because people are used to it and it's established. In a place like the US, where voter turnout is already low for a general election, it is hard to imagine why people would show up for specific issues. 3. If the issue at hand is very important to a small minority, but 99% of people don't really care, voter turnout will probably be low as well. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-model/a-17643284 https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics [2] https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/The%20idea%20of%20a%20political%20party%202-25-2020.pdf https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files...

3 ms·

Agree strongly with voting for individual ideas/policies rather than parties. I don’t like to think about the human years devoted to out-manoeuvring another par

by mikeodds 6y ago

not_knuth 6y ago
I believe the Swiss Referendum model is similar to what you are describing [0]. However, it has quite a few issues as well. The three biggest ones I can think of are: 1. Voting on single issues requires very engaged citizens that understand how their voting decisions impact the bigger scheme of things. Essentially it leads to the pitfalls of single-issue politics [1]. Political parties on the other hand, allow people to sort of vote for a direction. Ian Shapiro describes this phenomenon [2], but it is a long read. 2. The transition to and bootstrapping of such a system is very hard. It may work well in Switzerland, but that's because people are used to it and it's established. In a place like the US, where voter turnout is already low for a general election, it is hard to imagine why people would show up for specific issues. 3. If the issue at hand is very important to a small minority, but 99% of people don't really care, voter turnout will probably be low as well. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-model/a-17643284 https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics [2] https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/The%20idea%20of%20a%20political%20party%202-25-2020.pdf https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files...