I thought of a very interesting and reasonable-seeming improvement to democracy. One that would be direct and allow opinion strength to matter. Everyone gets 100 (for people who cant deal with decimal points) infinitely divisible (for those who can) votes at the start of each year. These do not roll over and are non-transferable, but multiple can be spent on one issue. As for how issues are raised: Anyone can write a bill. They must get some number of signatures, to be set by a government agency in charge of voting, for the bill to be randomly distributed to a small number of people (a few thousand) across the area where the vote takes place. These people can vote to have it on the ballot or not. If at least a significant minority of people (the exact size of minority to be decided upon during the creation of such a state, and possibly altered afterward) vote it onto the ballot, it is put on the public ballot. People can vote either for or against it with as many votes as they want, though not more than they have available, and this subtracts from their total vote capacity for that ballot. There would also be a standardized minimum number of votes needed to implement a change, so that a statistical fluke cannot become law, say, if the ballot has 200 issues on it (remember, even if there are a lot of issues, you dont have to vote on all of them, and in fact, shouldnt). Advantages: Issues that are extremely important to a minority get dealt with quickly because the minority can spend more of their voting power on that issue. No need to convince 50% of the population to vote yes, just convince the people who care strongly to vote yes and convince other people not to waste their votes on issues only important to a minority and people who absolutely cannot stand that minority. (who are hopefully smaller in number). The system favors smaller concentrated political parties and individual thought. Even a relatively small group of people can win an issue or three if they focus their voting power. perfectly 50/50-balanced 2-party systems would be inherently highly unstable. The need for elected officials would be greatly reduced. We would need a president and secretaries of state, defense, the treasury, etc, for foreign and internal affairs, and for being the commander-in-chief, but congress could be done away with, as the public fulfills their duties. Concise, simple, easy-to-follow and easy-to-understand bills would be favored over thousand-page monster-bills as well, because people dont want to spend days reading a bill. Political hijacking would essentially be impossible. Putting random extra stuff in bills wouldnt work, and people wouldnt have strong party allegiances to large-scale parties. Because congress would BE the people, there would be no issue of a potential disconnect in viewpoints, need to save their own skin, or parasitic agendas that try to help the congress member over the country. Only a fool would try to vote in a totally self-interested way, because it would be more self-interested to simply not vote at all. The states Constitution and amendments would have a higher standard for both being created and abolished. The minimum number of votes needed would be much higher, and there would need to be a larger percentage majority to cause change. Provincial, city, and community governments could follow a similar system, making national, provincial, city, and community governments all run in the same manner. Everyones votes always count for something if placed on the right issues. A supreme court could be established with justices voted in by the public. In this case, instead of voting a certain amount yes or no, one would vote a certain amount for one candidate or another. Same with the presidency and other such elections. Oppressive laws would be politically impossible to pass, as the to-be-oppressed would strike it down by spending much of their voting power on that one issue. Because a congress, etc, would be obsoleted, political lobbyists would be less effective, instead, they would need to win the hearts and minds of the public. How taxes worked would be up to the voters. If you want to make taxes go down or up or be flatter or steeper, write a bill that changes the taxes. Military, science, etc, spending would be up to the voters on a broad scale. It is unrealistic to assume that the public knows exactly what projects are best to spend on, but the total budget would at least be controllable. Protests would be mostly unnecessary. Any group large enough to raise awareness about themselves through protest could also just submit a bill and all vote 100% on that one bill, nearly guaranteeing it gets through, but sacrificing their votes on other issues. Apathetic voters who just vote one way or another on an issue wouldnt have to deal with that issue. If you think military budget is important but you couldnt care less about inheritance tax, just spend your votes on that and let other people deal with things you dont understand or care about. Voter turnout would increase dramatically, because one person would feel like they could make a bigger difference. Harsh political opposition would be dramatically reduced, seeing as a 2-party system would not work. Open discussion would work better and people wouldnt be boxed into a crude 1-dimensional liberal/conservative spectrum. Distrust of the government would be much less of an issue, as the voters themselves would be the government. People would have equal voting power. None of this Alaska vs. California vs. Florida being weighted differently nonsense. The funding games would stop being so severe. Congress suddenly cutting funding and crippling a project half way through, only to start a new one which will end crippled as well, is expensive. That wouldnt happen as much in a system like this. Every vote is a trade off. Nobody can use the fact that their party has the majority of the votes to win everything. Special interest groups will tend to vote harder about their concerns than even a large party with a broad voting pattern could.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 02:32:10 +0000
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