7 ms·

I'd think an easier change would be to bring back secret voting in Congress, which was effectively eliminated by the use of electronic voting introduced by chan

• Enginerrrd 4y ago
  >but not being under the influence of lobbyists and party leadership would allow congress members to truly vote on what they think is in their constituents best interests. Or, it would allow them to vote in favor of the biggest donors with impunity.
  • BurningFrog 4y ago
    It would also allow them lie to their biggest donor about their vote with impunity.
    • toolz 4y ago
      Unless the donor simply required proof of vote that was established, likely illegally. I find it hard to imagine a voting process that would be controlled by congress, to have annoyingly secure methods to ensure the private nature of the vote. Just look at our current voting machines. They're questionably secure and they're not even remotely as regulated/audited as even our gambling machines.
      • jimkleiber 4y ago
        For me the biggest switch is then I would care less about the individual performance and more about the team performance. Think about sports that have a stronger team component than individual. I think if the team fails, people often demand that lots of people leave the team—coach, owner, captain, etc. Sometimes to fully clean house. For more individual sports, people want that individual to leave. I think governance is more of a team sport than we realize and transparency efforts (congressional stats) make us focus more on the individual wins and less on the team wins. I care more if Congress passes an act I want than I do if my Senator votes in favor of what I want.
        • giantg2 4y ago
          "For me the biggest switch is then I would care less about the individual performance and more about the team performance." So, even stronger partisan based voting? Don't care about the individual, only if their party wins...
          • jimkleiber 4y ago
            No, care about Congress as a team, not just the sub-teams of Republicans and Democrats. Caring about just the party is like only caring if the football team's offense or defense does well but not whether the team wins the game.
            • giantg2 4y ago
              That would be ideal, but I don't see that as being what was meant by the other commenter. It's certainly not how it works today. That football analogy is broken. The football team shares common goals. The parties in Congress very clearly have separate ideals/philosophies on specific issues. Even when they have a shared end goal (as the often do) the means to achieve it can be complete opposites.
              • jimkleiber 4y ago
                I agree it doesn't work that way now, the strongest team identities are at the party level, overlooking that the US government was designed to balance different team identities: legislative vs executive vs judicial, federal (national) vs state, geographic territory vs population density. The football team may not share common goals. The offense may care about scoring lots of points because each player wants to get a higher salary in their upcoming contract negotiations. The owner may only care about offense because it gets more viewers and more lucrative TV contracts. I believe if we started rooting for Congress instead of rooting for one party (or one legislator), we might solve more collective problems. Personally, I don't care about the Republican or Democratic parties, I care if Congress solve problems. I want the American team to win not the political party, and I'm willing to guess that there are many more citizens who think like this than it appears.
    • Enginerrrd 4y ago
      Sure. Let's role play, I'll be the big money industry guy: "Well, BurningFrog, as you know, we really needed to get bill 1 through this month, bill 2 through next month, and bill 3 through by the end of the year. Since bill 1 passed, with the extra money we'll save and/or make we have an extra $500,000 in the budget to donate to your campaign, here's that check, BTW. Now, if bill 2 passes after that, our lobbying budget will be an additional $500k, and if bill 3 passes we'll have an extra $1,000,000. Good luck BurningFrog."
• giantg2 4y ago
  The major downside I see is constituents not being able to hold their representatives accountable. You can't trust what they say. You have to look at their voting record.
  • frankfrankfrank 4y ago
    I don’t necessarily disagree; but how exactly does that differ from the current state, regardless of where one falls on the ideological and political spectrum. The only ones to whom that does not apply are the aristocracy with the money and favor to bequeath.
  • jimkleiber 4y ago
    There's lots of research saying most citizens have no idea how their representatives vote, even when it's open, and the people who do track it are the lobbyists, consider Myth 5 from CRI's 7 myths of transparency [0]. If the committee votes were secret, aka more of the process were secret but not the final floor votes, then we could still see how they voted in the end. Also, if I'm not able to see how they vote individually, I'd probably be more likely to vote for people based on their team performance and not their individual performance and I think this is the biggest point for me. I don't care how Senator X votes, I care if Senator X convinces the team of Senators to pass a legislation. One Senator who says "but I voted the way you wanted me to vote" accomplishes much less for me than one Senator who is able to convince and negotiate with the other 99 to pass a bill that I wanted. So I'd look at whether things were happening that I wanted overall and if they weren't, I'd get rid of the person for not having the ability to move the team to better represent what I want. [0]: https://congressionalresearch.org/SevenDeadlyMyths.html https://congressionalresearch.org/SevenDeadlyMyths.html
    • giantg2 4y ago
      The arguments in that source are pretty poor. For example, given the number of people who die from medical mistakes, people absolutely should be taking more of a role in their own care. They offer no objective evidence to support their position. They even claim that all sorts of social ills were lower during the period of secrecy and suppose they must be related. I pay attention to what my representatives vote on the issues I care most about. How do you know if your senator convinced people to vote for their bill if the process is secret? I could just be that they would have voted party line regardless.
• avgcorrection 4y ago
  All that would accomplish is to hide things from the constituents. Politicians themselves benefit from the lobbyists. And the politicians who wouldn’t do what the lobbyists wanted any more would just lose elections since they would receive less campaign contributions. Natural selection.
  • jimkleiber 4y ago
    The argument is that if lobbyists can't know for certain how the person would vote, why give them money? If I want to give you $1M and yet I can't be sure you will vote the way I want you to, do I really want to take that gamble?
    • cycomanic 4y ago
      Why not attack the root cause and forbid political donations to parties and people running for election?
      • jimkleiber 4y ago
        I'd argue because there are lots of ways around such prohibitions. What's considered political speech or campaigning? Is me advocating on HN for a change in Congressional rules considered a campaign? What if I were paid for it? (I'm not, just strongly believe in it). I think it becomes really nebulous to track and define what is considered campaigning or electioneering, and it would be much much easier to just have members of Congress vote using an Aristotle dual urn voting machine [0]. I think the root cause is not political donations but being able to track whether those political donations have the intended effect. I imagine very very few lobbyists would give cash if they couldn't make sure the strings were attached just as they wanted them to be. [0]: https://congressionalresearch.org/SecretBallot.html https://congressionalresearch.org/SecretBallot.html
    • avgcorrection 4y ago
      If this turned out to be roadblock then lobbyists would lobby for a new act that overturned this law. It would get a freedom-sounding name like Openness Of Information For a Free America God Bless You Act. But how would they lobby for that...? you ask. It would go marginally slower because of this temporary roadblock. But the necessary information would nonethless get through by way of more informal means, in the same way that de facto bribery cannot be eliminated by boneheaded laws like “you may not explicitly say that you intend to do something if someone gives you money”. As long as there are lobbyists and politicians and they are allowed to interact... there’s a way. Or the politicians would just overturn the act by their own initiative since they want that sweet money.
• toolz 4y ago
  I struggle to see how giving congress more secret authority would do anything but cause more problems. Maybe the only benefit of this would be to put the emphasis (imho) correctly back on being diligent in electing congress members, but outside of that anything done by the government in secret, is not likely to be done for the people, but rather solely to benefit those with the power to act in secret. The incentives for congress members to act outside of their own selfish interests just doesn't exist in secret.
  • cheschire 4y ago
    However, the incentives for congress members to act outside of their party's selfish interests doesn't exist out in the open.
  • jimkleiber 4y ago
    I'm wondering if more closed committees and more secrecy (not full secrecy) would incentivize different people to run for Congress. For example, how many people who are very good at thinking deeply and negotiating and deliberating want to run for Congress now where almost every single decision is scrutinized and often broadcasted on TV? I sure hesitate to run because of how much micro-managing occurs, constantly looking over the shoulder to see if someone is doing their job. So I wonder if the current transparency initiatives inspire the ones who like to be in front of the cameras, constantly campaigning, more than those who like work together to govern.
    • toolz 4y ago
      if you don't value the affected peoples scrutiny I'm not sure you should be in the position to begin with. How can anyone act as the will of the people without the people knowing what they're doing?
      • jimkleiber 4y ago
        To me that's like saying how can someone be a good developer without letting the customers sit in on every meeting they have and watch the developer code in real-time. I believe a person can talk with constituents, maybe even 90% of the time, and learn as much from those conversations and then take that info into closed door discussions and negotiate on behalf of those people. And I think Congress would do a lot better collectively if we cared more about the team performance and less about the individual performance.
• frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  This, as the whole parent premise is fundamentally flawed. What you propose can only work under specific circumstances, which, even when those circumstances existed, could not thwart the corruption of the system.
  • jimkleiber 4y ago
    I believe quite strongly in what the parent said so I'm confused when you state that it would work in only specific circumstances but I'm open to it. What specific circumstances do you mean?
• cobri 4y ago
  Could the same result (plus continued transparency) come from banning political donations from any entity other than an individual citizen?