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How is, "A poll on a single issue is not the same as electing an entire person." a tautology? The will of the people is (usually, always federally) expressed i

How is, "A poll on a single issue is not the same as electing an entire person." a tautology? The will of the people is (usually, always federally) expressed in selecting a representative, not in any single issue, and that's by design. "The will of the people" isn't, "Legalize marijuana" it's, "My representative figures out a way to sanely legalize marijuana while balancing thousands of other initiatives and objectives according to their urgency and importance in a way I would, overall, approve of." Very few people want chaos, so very few people are voting simply on, "I just want this done, regardless of the cost." I don't think you're interpreting these single issue polls in a way that's applicable to how Americans want the US as a whole governed, instead you're interpreting those polls to just mean what you want them to mean, because it's a useful thing to point out as a mismatch between expectation and reality. It is not, however, a mismatch at all.

mindslight 5y ago
> How is, "A poll on a single issue is not the same as electing an entire person." a tautology? The problem isn't that you're saying they're different. The problem is that you're defining "will of the voters" narrowly, being equivalent to the result of an election. This makes your argument itself a tautology - if the "will of the voters" consists purely of how they voted, then of course the currently elected representatives are always the will of the voters. But if we're discussing how effective our representational system is, then your tautological definition is completely uninteresting. > The will of the people is (usually, always federally) expressed in selecting a representative, not in any single issue, and that's by design. "The will of the people" isn't, "Legalize marijuana" it's, "My representative figures out a way to sanely legalize marijuana while balancing thousands of other initiatives and objectives according to their urgency and importance in a way I would, overall, approve of." You're doing it again here, presupposing that a "voter's will" can only consist of what they can express through the current voting system, as opposed to what they would like to express when voting but cannot. My reference to a single issue opinion pole is precisely to show how voters' desires differ from their representatives' actions (with the assumption that pollees are representative of voters). If we use your definition, then the obvious "will of the voters" is to keep marijuana illegal, but this isn't saying much. Whereas using the broader definition, then we can talk about how the representative and plurality systems thwart the will of the voters by making them express their will in terms of constrained choices.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Of course I'm presupposing that voting on individual issues for a country as large and diverse as the US is a terrible idea, because it's a terrible idea. That is, definitionally, anarchy, and does not create a stable or fair government for anyone. I did presuppose that you understood that. Maybe that was not appropriate, but I'm not willing to discuss it, because I find it, a priori, a non-starter. This is well trod intellectual ground, and if you're curious, you can find ample writings debating the topic of a direct democracy vs. a representative democracy elsewhere that'll more accurately frame the discussion than anything I could come up with off the top of my head for free on HN. Given that a direct democracy results in substantially negative outcomes for the people who participate, therefore a representative democracy is about voting for the person, not the policy, and in that environment, the will of the people is indeed expressed as the selection of their representative, not on any isolated "What if you could magically have something with no downsides?" issue based polling. Narrowly focusing on one specific issue is naive. the US doesn't exist in a single-issue bubble, it exists in a complex web of political and practical (not to mention entirely unpredictable) needs which all have to be balanced simultaneously. If you want to pretend legislators can snap their fingers and make any individual issue "just happen" that's fine, but it's not reflective of reality on any level. You will continue to be confused and disappointed if you decide to live that way.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    I've made no claim to the contrary, and I agree at the very least that any proposal for direct democracy would be quite complicated even if it sounds simple. But that doesn't really have bearing on what I said. Voter opinion on individual issues is merely one metric we can use to evaluate how well the "will of the voters" is being represented. Another one, more focused on representational government, would be whether most voters are happy with the vote they cast, or whether they feel they had to compromise and vote "strategically". These questions are important for being able to discuss changes to our system. For example, posing the question of whether RCV/Condorcet would represent the will of the voters better than party-controlled primaries plus first past the post.

mindslight 5y ago

> How is, "A poll on a single issue is not the same as electing an entire person." a tautology? The problem isn't that you're saying they're different. The problem is that you're defining "will of the voters" narrowly, being equivalent to the result of an election. This makes your argument itself a tautology - if the "will of the voters" consists purely of how they voted, then of course the currently elected representatives are always the will of the voters. But if we're discussing how effective our representational system is, then your tautological definition is completely uninteresting. > The will of the people is (usually, always federally) expressed in selecting a representative, not in any single issue, and that's by design. "The will of the people" isn't, "Legalize marijuana" it's, "My representative figures out a way to sanely legalize marijuana while balancing thousands of other initiatives and objectives according to their urgency and importance in a way I would, overall, approve of." You're doing it again here, presupposing that a "voter's will" can only consist of what they can express through the current voting system, as opposed to what they would like to express when voting but cannot. My reference to a single issue opinion pole is precisely to show how voters' desires differ from their representatives' actions (with the assumption that pollees are representative of voters). If we use your definition, then the obvious "will of the voters" is to keep marijuana illegal, but this isn't saying much. Whereas using the broader definition, then we can talk about how the representative and plurality systems thwart the will of the voters by making them express their will in terms of constrained choices.

TameAntelope 5y ago
Of course I'm presupposing that voting on individual issues for a country as large and diverse as the US is a terrible idea, because it's a terrible idea. That is, definitionally, anarchy, and does not create a stable or fair government for anyone. I did presuppose that you understood that. Maybe that was not appropriate, but I'm not willing to discuss it, because I find it, a priori, a non-starter. This is well trod intellectual ground, and if you're curious, you can find ample writings debating the topic of a direct democracy vs. a representative democracy elsewhere that'll more accurately frame the discussion than anything I could come up with off the top of my head for free on HN. Given that a direct democracy results in substantially negative outcomes for the people who participate, therefore a representative democracy is about voting for the person, not the policy, and in that environment, the will of the people is indeed expressed as the selection of their representative, not on any isolated "What if you could magically have something with no downsides?" issue based polling. Narrowly focusing on one specific issue is naive. the US doesn't exist in a single-issue bubble, it exists in a complex web of political and practical (not to mention entirely unpredictable) needs which all have to be balanced simultaneously. If you want to pretend legislators can snap their fingers and make any individual issue "just happen" that's fine, but it's not reflective of reality on any level. You will continue to be confused and disappointed if you decide to live that way.
- mindslight 5y ago
  I've made no claim to the contrary, and I agree at the very least that any proposal for direct democracy would be quite complicated even if it sounds simple. But that doesn't really have bearing on what I said. Voter opinion on individual issues is merely one metric we can use to evaluate how well the "will of the voters" is being represented. Another one, more focused on representational government, would be whether most voters are happy with the vote they cast, or whether they feel they had to compromise and vote "strategically". These questions are important for being able to discuss changes to our system. For example, posing the question of whether RCV/Condorcet would represent the will of the voters better than party-controlled primaries plus first past the post.