5 ms·

Hollingsworth for US Senate 2014, implementing direct democracy

50 points by logn 14y ago

raintrees 14y ago
This is precisely the direction I would love to see politics go. Cut out the middle-people layer!
wlesieutre 14y ago
Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? Normal people don't have the time to vote on every single issue; we have our own jobs to do. A system like this just means he'll be voting with the loudest minority for everything that comes up.
- raintrees 14y ago
  It seems to me that this may already be the case?
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  Ideally that wouldn't matter. People who care about an issue would vote on it. That opens another can of worms, though - not enough people know or care about issues that will directly or indirectly affect them. People who do usually have some vested interest at stake. The key to success IMO for a system like this is preventing the real-world equivalent of bots and voting rings. Bots are one thing, but I'd imagine voting rings would be very difficult to mitigate in a system like this. I guess it depends on the parties involved raising awareness effectively.
  - davidw 14y ago
    > People who care about an issue would vote on it. That's a bad idea too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_benefits_and_diffuse_costs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_benefits_and_diffu...
    - knowaveragejoe 14y ago
      This is already a problem with the current voting system, is it not...? There are problems with this person's idea, but it's a step in the right direction IMO.
- mtgx 14y ago
  It's not ideal (what is?!) but I'd take that over deciding based on what their richest donors want - which is how most people in Congress vote these days. Besides, voting based on what most vocal/active constituents want is usually a pretty good idea, because they are the ones who usually research the topic the most, and have good solutions, and want their voices heard. And a senator would still have to make a judgement call and think about the whole population he's representing.
  - pmorici 14y ago
    On the contrary the loudest are usually the ones with the most to loose or gain.
    - knowaveragejoe 14y ago
      This is true, but with an actual 1 vote to 1 person ratio you can't really be "louder" than anyone else. Until you get voting rings going, in which case it's up to raising awareness about an issue and that's out of the domain of such a system, is it not?
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    voting based on what most vocal/active constituents want is usually a pretty good idea, because they are the ones who usually research the topic the most, and have good solutions, and want their voices heard Faulty syllogism there, in my view. The most vocal/active constituents can also be the most easily manipulated or the most extremist ones. Consider that there have been several Congressional attempts at immigration reform in the last decade or so, all of which have been derailed by a hardline nativist lobby which insists on deportation of all illegal aliens, which nobody in their right mind considers sensible, ethical, or practical. Frankly, I think there's an inverse correlation between political passion and expert knowledge.
- jowiar 14y ago
  Anyone who has lived in California at some point in the past decade knows that direct democracy is a disaster. Ballot initiatives create service (and corresponding spending) increases and forbid tax hikes, leaving the elected legislature unable to balance the state budget.
  - knowaveragejoe 14y ago
    Couldn't one implement some logic in the voting system based on the interdependence of bills? "You can't vote for this service without voting for one of these bills that include a tax increase that would cover the cost of said service"? On second thought, I can see how this would get ugly fairly quickly.
  - syedkarim 14y ago
    But direct democracy seems to work pretty well in Switzerland: http://post-gutenberg.com/tag/secret-of-switzerlands-success-with-direct-democracy/ http://post-gutenberg.com/tag/secret-of-switzerlands-success...
    - fatbird 14y ago
      Switzerland is just over 2.6% the size of the U.S. and much, much more homogenous a culture. They're not remotely comparable.
      - syedkarim 14y ago
        I can understand how cultural homogeneity could impact the decision-making process (though Switzerland is a country of four official languages, so it's not that homogeneous), but I don't see how size matters. Care to elaborate?
        anigbrowl 14y ago
        Just as you have economies of scale, there are diseconomies of scale, many of which result from combinatorial explosion in communication channels, and are as applicable to political as to industrial process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale
- jackowayed 14y ago
  Exactly. We have representatives for good reasons. Almost no one cares about most bills (which means they also won't know all the intricacies that often make the difference between a good bill and a bad bill). Even with the high-profile ones that we do care about, people will often vote for what they want now instead of what they need in the longterm (though our legislators aren't much better since they constantly are looking to the next election, especially in the House). California's ballot proposition system has shown that people will vote for flawed bills that sound good and be very reluctant to ever approve tax increases. If this were implemented, for probably 90% of votes that he casts, we would see very low turnouts with voters coming from two groups: special interests--the small group of citizens who are deeply affected by the outcome of the vote and thus find it worthwhile to vote; and political junkies who get satisfaction out of voting on every issue, but who probably don't actually have time to really be informed about every single bill, especially as they evolve. Implementation would also be extremely challenging. How do you ensure that Oregon residents (and which residents?--those who are eligible to vote? Those who are registered to vote? All, even children, felons, etc?) can vote once, and all others cannot vote? How do you handle people whose credentials for voting (whatever they may be) are compromised? What happens when a bill is amended--do people who have already voted on it have their votes stand by default? Are they able to change them? If they're able to change them, is that at the expense of anonymity? Do you actually have anonymity anyway? How does the Senator vote if someone DoS's the voting system? And obviously if there are any security vulnerabilities in the system, lots of problems could arise. These are very hard problems; there's been quite a bit of research into evoting, yet it is still very much an unsolved problem. If someone wins on a direct democracy platform, these problems will become very apparently very fast.
  - logn 14y ago
    Assuming successful election, a large number of people would have shown interest in this, and those people could be engaged through a variety of outlets to vote. Senators also have a sizeable budget to send mail for free to voters. Senators have access to a list of registered voters, which could help curb fraud.
- logn 14y ago
  In the Senate for 2012, their were about 150 votes on things other than nominations or Senate procedural matters. See: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_112_2.htm http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_m...
- avar 14y ago
  > Normal people don't have the time to vote on every single issue It's really easy to have both direct democracy and the convenience of not having to vote on any given issue. You could grant the use of your vote to another citizen or a group of citizens. If you don't like how they vote you could instantly revoke their right to cast your vote on your behalf and go back to voting on every single issue. You could also grant use of your vote to different parties depending on the subject matter, maybe you like Bob to cast votes for you on environmental issues, but prefer Susan to do it if it has to do with foreign policy. Which bucket an issue falls into could be handled similarly, a third-party you op-it to trust to categorize issues before your vote is handed off to other parties that are voting on your behalf. Those are just some that come to mind, you could do much better. But the point is that with modern technology it would be easy for everyone to choose where they want to side on the direct democracy v.s. representative democracy spectrum, and they could do so on an issue-by-issue basis. The problem isn't that it's infeasible, it's just that nobody's tried because it would take power away from those that are currently holding it.
  - smokeyj 14y ago
    People seem pretty conflicted about democracy. They want 'the people' to be in control, but not really -- because they're not very smart and somewhat irrational. Yet they're all for voting. Maybe because they knew their vote doesn't matter? It gets confusing pretty quick.
  - davekinkead 14y ago
    > You could grant the use of your vote to another citizen or a group of citizens. This idea is common in a lot of new ideas about representation (eg the German Pirate Party's Liquid Democracy http://liquidfeedback.org/ http://liquidfeedback.org/) yet I'd argue it is also a really bad idea. One of the key values of any democracy, and direct democracy in particular, is that it values and promotes human autonomy. Instead of being subject to arbitrary powers, the 'people' rule themselves - we are only subject to laws that we ourselves have authored (or delegated to others to author in our current cases). But allowing everyone to vote on everything violates autonomy. Most people recognise that autonomy requires having some/equal say in matters that materially affect them. Yet few realise that giving others a say in matters that don't affect them undermines the autonomy of those affected. So while laws apply relatively equally to all those in a jurisdiction, the distribution of effect is far from equal. Proxy voting allows those with little skin in the game to drown out those significantly affected by proposed laws. The fact that people don't have the time to vote on every issue, and so will only likely vote on matters important to them, is one of the major strengths of direct democracy.
- vaadu 14y ago
  It is a terrible idea. Too many decisions would be based upon an over-reacting emotional response to the latest disaster. The Patriot Act is one such stupid response that happened right after 9-11. Direct democracy permits the majority to trounce the rights of the minority. A better answer would be that candidates for public office could only accept campaign contributions from registered voters in the candidate's district. This would beholden the candidate to his voters.
  - davekinkead 14y ago
    I think you've got this backwards. The patriot act wasn't a result of direct democracy, but getting rid of it would be much easier under direct democracy. Government involves both the creation and ammendment/removal of statutes. Direct democracy is no more likely to lead to tyranny of the majority than representational democracy (slavery and segregation was an act of representational democracy if you recall). You are confusing two dimensions: direct <--> representative with majoritarianism <--> constitutionalism. Direct democracy is perfectly compatible with all the checks and balances of liberalism and a constitution.
mtgx 14y ago
Sounds like a great idea. The senators wouldn't be forced to vote based on the population's "feedback" in all cases, so you'd still have a republic, not a real "direct democracy", and in the same time they'd get much better and more accurate information about what their constituents really want, compared to how they get it now through the "experts" (lobbyists).
cjoh 14y ago
Direct democracy enables citizens to vote for every service imaginable and vote to pay no taxes for them.
- johnpmayer 14y ago
  Direct democracy enables citizens to vote for a balanced budget as well.
  - calpaterson 14y ago
    Even though a balanced budget is in everyone's general interest, it is often specifically against a huge number of people's interest. Direct democracy of the kind Hollingsworth is putting forward is possibly an improvement, but it doesn't solve the issue of people voting for other people to pay.
- kybernetikos 14y ago
  If you really believe that the populace are so stupid as to think that they can get services without paying for them, why would they not elect representatives that promise the same thing? Representation rather than direct democracy does not help at all here.
  - jtc331 14y ago
    The people already do vote for such representatives.
    - kybernetikos 14y ago
      Then representative democracy is no better than direct democracy in this case which was the point I was trying to make.
- davekinkead 14y ago
  Except in the real world. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/9138137/Swiss-vote-against-taking-more-holiday.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland... But the US government seems to be doing a pretty good job of just that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CBO_-_Revenues_and_Outlays_as_percent_GDP.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CBO_-_Revenues_and_Outlays...
ms4720 14y ago
Well this is just polling, it still is a stupid idea even from just poling point of view. To tell the truth I would like to see the 17th Amendment repealed, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... if there is interest I am willing to write up why, but now I need to make coffee
- huntaub 14y ago
  I'm curious to hear why you dislike the 17th amendment. If you find time, do come back and write it up.
  - ms4720 14y ago
    As was stated by jrs235 it takes the state governments out of the picture at the federal level. This has lead to a much more powerful and invasive federal government for internal matters in America.
- jrs235 14y ago
  I'm with ms4720. We should repeal the 17th Amendment. The short reason is because State governments no longer have representation in the Federal Government. There are other benefits to repealing it as well such as less money and noise spent on Senate elections.
- logn 14y ago
  Politicians don't really poll what everyone wants. They poll to see how to boost their numbers for a specific group, such as NRA or unions. They now that certain people will always vote for them.
dkhenry 14y ago
This is the wrong soution to this problem. The _right_ solution is to quadrouple the number of senators and house members. This effort shows that yes via technology we can have more people voting on the important business of the country , but it doesn't mean we should ignore the benefits of representative democracy and pretend everyone will know everything about everything. The right solution is to water down congress, it amazes me that we have allowed the voice of so many people to be condensed into so few representatives. My parents had twice as much representation ( in terms of votes / constitutant ) then I do. My grandparents had almost four times as much [0] As a fun by-product you would completely eliminate the effect of large donors on the government. Lets see the Koch brothers or George Soros donate $1 Million dollars to ~1600 Congressmen every two years. 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment#House_size http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_app...
- dmix 14y ago
  +1 Moving towards more state-level government instead of centralized federally.
  - zanny 14y ago
    I think state level misses the point. The underlying ideology is applicable at all levels, which is that a representative can better represent fewer people rather than more people. You trade off accuracy of representation for protection against popular interests. Currently, we are at an absurd extreme in terms of human history (one president for 320 million, then in Cali its 1 senator per 25 million people). We already have governmental overhead of 1 person on public payroll for every 6 people. I figure you could easily have 1 direct representative per 1,000 people if you change the system to an elector tree like the old US Senate rather than direct voting for too many positions. Also, +1 for username 😉
    - jrs235 14y ago
      The senate was never intended to represent the people, it was intended to represent the states. The 17th Amendment usurped the states rightful representation in the federal government and would be best if repealed. But it's harder to control the state governments if the federal government can't enforce mandates such as withholding money from states that refuse to pass or enforce laws. Those in favor of such centralized power are often unaware of their Authoritarian support. No state senator would pass such mandates laws and vote to limit their state governments if the senators had to answer to and were elected by the state legislatures. Each state can elect their senators as they see fit.
sage_joch 14y ago
If every senator and representative did this, we could abstract away Congress.
whit537 14y ago
Hmmm ... what if there were someone doing this in every state?
blendergasket 14y ago
I see a great opportunity in this for some sort of voting mill mechanical turk like system for people who aren't political and need money to sell their vote to some fascist with an agenda.
lukifer 14y ago
I heartily support this idea; however, the problem I see is that the secret ballot is not enforced, either in the process, or through the threat of legal enforcement. If I can reliably observe someone voting, even with their consent, votes can be influenced through purchase or coercion. And unless new laws get passed to cover online pseudo-voting, such things wouldn't even be illegal, and I could roll around poor-income neighborhoods with a bullhorn advertising $10 per vote. It's a solvable problem, and maybe I'm overstating the risk, but I think it's a problem worth paying attention to while pursuing these (worthwhile) experiments.
- smokeyj 14y ago
  > I could roll around poor-income neighborhoods with a bullhorn advertising $10 per vote. I'm pretty sure lobbying is socially acceptable.
- michaelt 14y ago
  Plenty of places let you vote by post, which has this problem. And with people taking their camera phones into voting booths, arguably manual voting does too.
tptacek 14y ago
Hollingsworth would be running against Jeff Merkley, considered one of the more liberal members of the Senate, who won in 2008 by just 3 points. Essentially, he'd be running as a spoiler for the GOP.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  An interesting example from the last election, and worth the read despite eh frothy prose at the outset: https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/gary-johnson-swindle https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/gary-johnson-swindle
protomyth 14y ago
Really defeats the purpose of the Senate. It is bad enough we have direct election of Senators when the Senate was supposed to be the way the states kept the federal government in check. At this point given technology and travel times, I would be more apt to support an amendment to replace the two Senators with the state's Governor. At least some fiscal control and concequences for state budgets would be discussed.
jere 14y ago
Wow, I had this exact idea few months ago. I figured the founding fathers would be against it though.
ivan_ah 14y ago
I think this is a brilliant idea! Elect officials should be like secretaries -- the public decides the course of action (though informal discussion, debates real-world and online forums) and after the decision is taken the senator is told what to do. The key idea is to have a public debate in which all issues can be thoroughly considered, conflicting interest groups can have their say until an agreement is reached. The beauty of the "senators as secretaries" ideas is that we can measure their performance in much more detail. Did they implement each of the decisions the people chose? If not, then they get the boot. Democracy works when the citizens care. We might not care about all things, but we care about the things that concern us. Discussion and debates + project development by interested volunteers is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than some stupid polarizing vote.

50 points by logn 14y ago

This is precisely the direction I would love to see politics go. Cut out the middle-people layer!

Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? Normal people don't have the time to vote on every single issue; we have our own jobs to do. A system like this just means he'll be voting with the loudest minority for everything that comes up.

raintrees 14y ago
It seems to me that this may already be the case?
knowaveragejoe 14y ago
Ideally that wouldn't matter. People who care about an issue would vote on it. That opens another can of worms, though - not enough people know or care about issues that will directly or indirectly affect them. People who do usually have some vested interest at stake. The key to success IMO for a system like this is preventing the real-world equivalent of bots and voting rings. Bots are one thing, but I'd imagine voting rings would be very difficult to mitigate in a system like this. I guess it depends on the parties involved raising awareness effectively.
- davidw 14y ago
  > People who care about an issue would vote on it. That's a bad idea too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_benefits_and_diffuse_costs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_benefits_and_diffu...
  - knowaveragejoe 14y ago
    This is already a problem with the current voting system, is it not...? There are problems with this person's idea, but it's a step in the right direction IMO.
mtgx 14y ago
It's not ideal (what is?!) but I'd take that over deciding based on what their richest donors want - which is how most people in Congress vote these days. Besides, voting based on what most vocal/active constituents want is usually a pretty good idea, because they are the ones who usually research the topic the most, and have good solutions, and want their voices heard. And a senator would still have to make a judgement call and think about the whole population he's representing.
- pmorici 14y ago
  On the contrary the loudest are usually the ones with the most to loose or gain.
  - knowaveragejoe 14y ago
    This is true, but with an actual 1 vote to 1 person ratio you can't really be "louder" than anyone else. Until you get voting rings going, in which case it's up to raising awareness about an issue and that's out of the domain of such a system, is it not?
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  voting based on what most vocal/active constituents want is usually a pretty good idea, because they are the ones who usually research the topic the most, and have good solutions, and want their voices heard Faulty syllogism there, in my view. The most vocal/active constituents can also be the most easily manipulated or the most extremist ones. Consider that there have been several Congressional attempts at immigration reform in the last decade or so, all of which have been derailed by a hardline nativist lobby which insists on deportation of all illegal aliens, which nobody in their right mind considers sensible, ethical, or practical. Frankly, I think there's an inverse correlation between political passion and expert knowledge.
jowiar 14y ago
Anyone who has lived in California at some point in the past decade knows that direct democracy is a disaster. Ballot initiatives create service (and corresponding spending) increases and forbid tax hikes, leaving the elected legislature unable to balance the state budget.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  Couldn't one implement some logic in the voting system based on the interdependence of bills? "You can't vote for this service without voting for one of these bills that include a tax increase that would cover the cost of said service"? On second thought, I can see how this would get ugly fairly quickly.
- syedkarim 14y ago
  But direct democracy seems to work pretty well in Switzerland: http://post-gutenberg.com/tag/secret-of-switzerlands-success-with-direct-democracy/ http://post-gutenberg.com/tag/secret-of-switzerlands-success...
  - fatbird 14y ago
    Switzerland is just over 2.6% the size of the U.S. and much, much more homogenous a culture. They're not remotely comparable.
    - syedkarim 14y ago
      I can understand how cultural homogeneity could impact the decision-making process (though Switzerland is a country of four official languages, so it's not that homogeneous), but I don't see how size matters. Care to elaborate?
      - anigbrowl 14y ago
        Just as you have economies of scale, there are diseconomies of scale, many of which result from combinatorial explosion in communication channels, and are as applicable to political as to industrial process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale
jackowayed 14y ago
Exactly. We have representatives for good reasons. Almost no one cares about most bills (which means they also won't know all the intricacies that often make the difference between a good bill and a bad bill). Even with the high-profile ones that we do care about, people will often vote for what they want now instead of what they need in the longterm (though our legislators aren't much better since they constantly are looking to the next election, especially in the House). California's ballot proposition system has shown that people will vote for flawed bills that sound good and be very reluctant to ever approve tax increases. If this were implemented, for probably 90% of votes that he casts, we would see very low turnouts with voters coming from two groups: special interests--the small group of citizens who are deeply affected by the outcome of the vote and thus find it worthwhile to vote; and political junkies who get satisfaction out of voting on every issue, but who probably don't actually have time to really be informed about every single bill, especially as they evolve. Implementation would also be extremely challenging. How do you ensure that Oregon residents (and which residents?--those who are eligible to vote? Those who are registered to vote? All, even children, felons, etc?) can vote once, and all others cannot vote? How do you handle people whose credentials for voting (whatever they may be) are compromised? What happens when a bill is amended--do people who have already voted on it have their votes stand by default? Are they able to change them? If they're able to change them, is that at the expense of anonymity? Do you actually have anonymity anyway? How does the Senator vote if someone DoS's the voting system? And obviously if there are any security vulnerabilities in the system, lots of problems could arise. These are very hard problems; there's been quite a bit of research into evoting, yet it is still very much an unsolved problem. If someone wins on a direct democracy platform, these problems will become very apparently very fast.
- logn 14y ago
  Assuming successful election, a large number of people would have shown interest in this, and those people could be engaged through a variety of outlets to vote. Senators also have a sizeable budget to send mail for free to voters. Senators have access to a list of registered voters, which could help curb fraud.
logn 14y ago
In the Senate for 2012, their were about 150 votes on things other than nominations or Senate procedural matters. See: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_112_2.htm http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_m...
avar 14y ago
> Normal people don't have the time to vote on every single issue It's really easy to have both direct democracy and the convenience of not having to vote on any given issue. You could grant the use of your vote to another citizen or a group of citizens. If you don't like how they vote you could instantly revoke their right to cast your vote on your behalf and go back to voting on every single issue. You could also grant use of your vote to different parties depending on the subject matter, maybe you like Bob to cast votes for you on environmental issues, but prefer Susan to do it if it has to do with foreign policy. Which bucket an issue falls into could be handled similarly, a third-party you op-it to trust to categorize issues before your vote is handed off to other parties that are voting on your behalf. Those are just some that come to mind, you could do much better. But the point is that with modern technology it would be easy for everyone to choose where they want to side on the direct democracy v.s. representative democracy spectrum, and they could do so on an issue-by-issue basis. The problem isn't that it's infeasible, it's just that nobody's tried because it would take power away from those that are currently holding it.
- smokeyj 14y ago
  People seem pretty conflicted about democracy. They want 'the people' to be in control, but not really -- because they're not very smart and somewhat irrational. Yet they're all for voting. Maybe because they knew their vote doesn't matter? It gets confusing pretty quick.
- davekinkead 14y ago
  > You could grant the use of your vote to another citizen or a group of citizens. This idea is common in a lot of new ideas about representation (eg the German Pirate Party's Liquid Democracy http://liquidfeedback.org/ http://liquidfeedback.org/) yet I'd argue it is also a really bad idea. One of the key values of any democracy, and direct democracy in particular, is that it values and promotes human autonomy. Instead of being subject to arbitrary powers, the 'people' rule themselves - we are only subject to laws that we ourselves have authored (or delegated to others to author in our current cases). But allowing everyone to vote on everything violates autonomy. Most people recognise that autonomy requires having some/equal say in matters that materially affect them. Yet few realise that giving others a say in matters that don't affect them undermines the autonomy of those affected. So while laws apply relatively equally to all those in a jurisdiction, the distribution of effect is far from equal. Proxy voting allows those with little skin in the game to drown out those significantly affected by proposed laws. The fact that people don't have the time to vote on every issue, and so will only likely vote on matters important to them, is one of the major strengths of direct democracy.
vaadu 14y ago
It is a terrible idea. Too many decisions would be based upon an over-reacting emotional response to the latest disaster. The Patriot Act is one such stupid response that happened right after 9-11. Direct democracy permits the majority to trounce the rights of the minority. A better answer would be that candidates for public office could only accept campaign contributions from registered voters in the candidate's district. This would beholden the candidate to his voters.
- davekinkead 14y ago
  I think you've got this backwards. The patriot act wasn't a result of direct democracy, but getting rid of it would be much easier under direct democracy. Government involves both the creation and ammendment/removal of statutes. Direct democracy is no more likely to lead to tyranny of the majority than representational democracy (slavery and segregation was an act of representational democracy if you recall). You are confusing two dimensions: direct <--> representative with majoritarianism <--> constitutionalism. Direct democracy is perfectly compatible with all the checks and balances of liberalism and a constitution.

mtgx 14y ago

Sounds like a great idea. The senators wouldn't be forced to vote based on the population's "feedback" in all cases, so you'd still have a republic, not a real "direct democracy", and in the same time they'd get much better and more accurate information about what their constituents really want, compared to how they get it now through the "experts" (lobbyists).

cjoh 14y ago

Direct democracy enables citizens to vote for every service imaginable and vote to pay no taxes for them.

johnpmayer 14y ago
Direct democracy enables citizens to vote for a balanced budget as well.
- calpaterson 14y ago
  Even though a balanced budget is in everyone's general interest, it is often specifically against a huge number of people's interest. Direct democracy of the kind Hollingsworth is putting forward is possibly an improvement, but it doesn't solve the issue of people voting for other people to pay.
kybernetikos 14y ago
If you really believe that the populace are so stupid as to think that they can get services without paying for them, why would they not elect representatives that promise the same thing? Representation rather than direct democracy does not help at all here.
- jtc331 14y ago
  The people already do vote for such representatives.
  - kybernetikos 14y ago
    Then representative democracy is no better than direct democracy in this case which was the point I was trying to make.
davekinkead 14y ago
Except in the real world. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/9138137/Swiss-vote-against-taking-more-holiday.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland... But the US government seems to be doing a pretty good job of just that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CBO_-_Revenues_and_Outlays_as_percent_GDP.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CBO_-_Revenues_and_Outlays...

ms4720 14y ago

Well this is just polling, it still is a stupid idea even from just poling point of view. To tell the truth I would like to see the 17th Amendment repealed, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... if there is interest I am willing to write up why, but now I need to make coffee

huntaub 14y ago
I'm curious to hear why you dislike the 17th amendment. If you find time, do come back and write it up.
- ms4720 14y ago
  As was stated by jrs235 it takes the state governments out of the picture at the federal level. This has lead to a much more powerful and invasive federal government for internal matters in America.
jrs235 14y ago
I'm with ms4720. We should repeal the 17th Amendment. The short reason is because State governments no longer have representation in the Federal Government. There are other benefits to repealing it as well such as less money and noise spent on Senate elections.
logn 14y ago
Politicians don't really poll what everyone wants. They poll to see how to boost their numbers for a specific group, such as NRA or unions. They now that certain people will always vote for them.

dkhenry 14y ago

This is the wrong soution to this problem. The _right_ solution is to quadrouple the number of senators and house members. This effort shows that yes via technology we can have more people voting on the important business of the country , but it doesn't mean we should ignore the benefits of representative democracy and pretend everyone will know everything about everything. The right solution is to water down congress, it amazes me that we have allowed the voice of so many people to be condensed into so few representatives. My parents had twice as much representation ( in terms of votes / constitutant ) then I do. My grandparents had almost four times as much [0] As a fun by-product you would completely eliminate the effect of large donors on the government. Lets see the Koch brothers or George Soros donate $1 Million dollars to ~1600 Congressmen every two years. 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment#House_size http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_app...

dmix 14y ago
+1 Moving towards more state-level government instead of centralized federally.
- zanny 14y ago
  I think state level misses the point. The underlying ideology is applicable at all levels, which is that a representative can better represent fewer people rather than more people. You trade off accuracy of representation for protection against popular interests. Currently, we are at an absurd extreme in terms of human history (one president for 320 million, then in Cali its 1 senator per 25 million people). We already have governmental overhead of 1 person on public payroll for every 6 people. I figure you could easily have 1 direct representative per 1,000 people if you change the system to an elector tree like the old US Senate rather than direct voting for too many positions. Also, +1 for username 😉
  - jrs235 14y ago
    The senate was never intended to represent the people, it was intended to represent the states. The 17th Amendment usurped the states rightful representation in the federal government and would be best if repealed. But it's harder to control the state governments if the federal government can't enforce mandates such as withholding money from states that refuse to pass or enforce laws. Those in favor of such centralized power are often unaware of their Authoritarian support. No state senator would pass such mandates laws and vote to limit their state governments if the senators had to answer to and were elected by the state legislatures. Each state can elect their senators as they see fit.

sage_joch 14y ago

If every senator and representative did this, we could abstract away Congress.

whit537 14y ago

Hmmm ... what if there were someone doing this in every state?

blendergasket 14y ago

I see a great opportunity in this for some sort of voting mill mechanical turk like system for people who aren't political and need money to sell their vote to some fascist with an agenda.

lukifer 14y ago

I heartily support this idea; however, the problem I see is that the secret ballot is not enforced, either in the process, or through the threat of legal enforcement. If I can reliably observe someone voting, even with their consent, votes can be influenced through purchase or coercion. And unless new laws get passed to cover online pseudo-voting, such things wouldn't even be illegal, and I could roll around poor-income neighborhoods with a bullhorn advertising $10 per vote. It's a solvable problem, and maybe I'm overstating the risk, but I think it's a problem worth paying attention to while pursuing these (worthwhile) experiments.

smokeyj 14y ago
> I could roll around poor-income neighborhoods with a bullhorn advertising $10 per vote. I'm pretty sure lobbying is socially acceptable.
michaelt 14y ago
Plenty of places let you vote by post, which has this problem. And with people taking their camera phones into voting booths, arguably manual voting does too.

tptacek 14y ago

Hollingsworth would be running against Jeff Merkley, considered one of the more liberal members of the Senate, who won in 2008 by just 3 points. Essentially, he'd be running as a spoiler for the GOP.

anigbrowl 14y ago
An interesting example from the last election, and worth the read despite eh frothy prose at the outset: https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/gary-johnson-swindle https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/gary-johnson-swindle

protomyth 14y ago

Really defeats the purpose of the Senate. It is bad enough we have direct election of Senators when the Senate was supposed to be the way the states kept the federal government in check. At this point given technology and travel times, I would be more apt to support an amendment to replace the two Senators with the state's Governor. At least some fiscal control and concequences for state budgets would be discussed.

jere 14y ago

Wow, I had this exact idea few months ago. I figured the founding fathers would be against it though.

ivan_ah 14y ago

I think this is a brilliant idea! Elect officials should be like secretaries -- the public decides the course of action (though informal discussion, debates real-world and online forums) and after the decision is taken the senator is told what to do. The key idea is to have a public debate in which all issues can be thoroughly considered, conflicting interest groups can have their say until an agreement is reached. The beauty of the "senators as secretaries" ideas is that we can measure their performance in much more detail. Did they implement each of the decisions the people chose? If not, then they get the boot. Democracy works when the citizens care. We might not care about all things, but we care about the things that concern us. Discussion and debates + project development by interested volunteers is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than some stupid polarizing vote.