Direct Democracy cuts through all the crap

Tired of the two party wrestling match?

Direct Democracy would empower the People to vote in new laws with a simple 2/3rds quorum. This quorum could be reached any day of the week if Internet Voting was continuous.

Internet voting could likely be made reliable if the voting was open ballot, open systems, and it contained a paper trail that was randomly verified by workers and the public. It would also require stiff penalties against tampering.

That aside, Direct Democracy could force Government to be economically responsible and environmentally sensitive in a week. It could end the war over night. It could fire underachievers and vote in measures and limits that would make the People feel in control again. It could ease out the Fed and dump the Patriot Act and even push out the NWO.

God only knows it would wake up the voters and get them involved like never before.

Anybody see an insurmountable problem with getting this?

The details would be tricky, but we really, really need to give something like that a go. I've pondered it--it gets complicated, but nothing else seems to be working heheh.

Bumpity for now.

reply to post by Ethericplane


Yes. We should all quit our jobs and devote all the time necessary to researching and providing our thoughtful vote on the thousands of items that will require our action.

reply to post by Ethericplane


But what about the sockpupets?

en.wikipedia.org...(Internet)

Ballot stuffingSockpuppets may be created during an online poll to submit multiple votes in favor of the puppeteer. A related usage is creating multiple identities, each supporting the puppeteer's views in an argument, attempting to position the puppeteer as representing majority opinion and sideline opposition voices. In the abstract theory of social networks and reputation systems, this is known as a sybil attack.

A sockpuppet-like use of deceptive fake identities is used in stealth marketing. The stealth marketer creates one or more pseudonymous accounts, each one claiming to be owned by a different enthusiastic supporter of the sponsor's product or book or ideology.[31][32] A single such sockpuppet is acting as a shill; creating large numbers of them to fake a "grass-roots" upswelling of support for a cause is known as astroturfing.

I highly recommend everyone watch this to understand the dangers of a direct democracy.

Wow, its nice to see I wasn't the only one thinking this. It seemed like such a simple idea, and it clearly is... Sorry, just caught me by surprise is all

reply to post by jcord


It doesn't necessarily have to be every person voting on every thing. People could focus on certain areas that they're interested in or something like that. It wouldn't be perfect, but I bet it would work a hell of a lot better than our current system

Originally posted by jcord
reply to post by Ethericplane

 

Yes. We should all quit our jobs and devote all the time necessary to researching and providing our thoughtful vote on the thousands of items that will require our action.

This seems like it could be a real solution to the problems the US is having although Ethericplane does have a valid point, there are thousands of bills and laws to be voted upon.

We would need a way to stream line this process so that it does not take up a massive amount of our time. Maybe we could do this by limiting the number of bills and laws to a certain number per year and make exceptions for emergency votes based on a comity of some sort.

One way to eliminate a lot of the votes needed to be voted upon by the citizens would be to ban the use of lobbyist...


Lobbyist are a two sided coin. There a lobbyist that do represent a cause which is worth while to listen to and then there are the corporate lobbyist that entice law changes and enactments for the good of the corporate elites.

Maybe we could get rid of just the corporate lobbyist? I am not sure how that would work though.

reply to post by Ethericplane


I like the idea of fully accountable internet voting, but the e-voting system we have now can just be hacked into and rigged.

Call me crazy, but I like the idea of balancing the budget each month/week or whatever. For an ordinary person, they make X amount of dollars working, so they should have X amount of dollars to spend on rent, food, utilities, and so on. But for a government, they take in X amount of dollars and spend like....2X....on a bunch of stuff that they don't need.

Imagine a person making $3,500 a month, and they spend that amount alone on unnecessary things like a bunch of collectable swords that they will never use. They're retarded, right? But when a goverment spends that amount of money on a bunch of unnecessary things like expanding our already disgustingly bloated mlitary, it's supposed to be a necessity?

That would be like the guy saying "I need these 50 swords stashed at my moms house 500 miles away to protect me!". It's insanity.

Originally posted by TupacShakur
reply to post by Ethericplane

 

Call me crazy, but I like the idea of balancing the budget each month/week or whatever. For an ordinary person, they make X amount of dollars working, so they should have X amount of dollars to spend on rent, food, utilities, and so on. But for a government, they take in X amount of dollars and spend like....2X....on a bunch of stuff that they don't need.

Unfortunately a budget as large as what we deal with on a "country scale" is not logistically balance-able on a month by month basis. There is just simply too much data from too many federal organizations to collect to effectively balance in a months time

reply to post by mileysubet

Unfortunately a budget as large as what we deal with on a "country scale" is not logistically balance-able on a month by month basis. There is just simply too much data from too many federal organizations to collect to effectively balance in a months time

I'd settle for an annual balanced budget, as long as it's balanced. That's the important part, and it's really one of the most basic concepts out there which requires just an ounce of common sense, but for some reason our government can't seem to grasp it.

Originally posted by jcord
reply to post by Ethericplane

 

Yes. We should all quit our jobs and devote all the time necessary to researching and providing our thoughtful vote on the thousands of items that will require our action.

And Congress does? Let's say we get rid of the House and keep the Senate? The Senate would propose laws and vote to pass them on for the people to approve. There, everybody's happy. Problem Solved.

Originally posted by JBA2848
reply to post by Ethericplane

 

But what about the sockpupets?

en.wikipedia.org...(Internet)

Ballot stuffingSockpuppets may be created during an online poll to submit multiple votes in favor of the puppeteer. A related usage is creating multiple identities, each supporting the puppeteer's views in an argument, attempting to position the puppeteer as representing majority opinion and sideline opposition voices. In the abstract theory of social networks and reputation systems, this is known as a sybil attack.

A sockpuppet-like use of deceptive fake identities is used in stealth marketing. The stealth marketer creates one or more pseudonymous accounts, each one claiming to be owned by a different enthusiastic supporter of the sponsor's product or book or ideology.[31][32] A single such sockpuppet is acting as a shill; creating large numbers of them to fake a "grass-roots" upswelling of support for a cause is known as astroturfing.

This is why the vote has to be open, i.e. non secret, and historically verified by enough personal information to guarantee it's authenticity. There are several ways to verify an open vote. Secret votes really get tricky, but we don't need secret votes, just laws against voter intimidation. There will be some folly here, but not enough to upset a 2/3rds quorum.

I like SWITZERLAND'S POLITICAL SYSTEM OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY:

1. Constitutional Republic
2. Elected representative government
3. The electorate has a veto-right on laws
4. 2.5% of the population can call for a constitutional amendment

You could tweak these to work better in the US.

Originally posted by superstatue
I highly recommend everyone watch this to understand the dangers of a direct democracy.

I watched your video and we already have an oligarchy, so we need more democracy. Direct Democracy is not majority rule without law, it is majority rule by the law. However the issue here is who is writing the laws and whether they serve the people. Insider trading in congress does not serve the people, profit wars do not serve the people, maneuvering he people into debt does not serve the people; it serves the big banks only!

So what we need is a way for the people to strike down the oligarchy when they start writing their own laws that hurt the people. We need to decentralize power and never trust any system that allows big money to hire lobbyists to bribe the republic. Separate store and state. Give the People the power or set them up for slavery by the oligarchy.

Originally posted by daskakik
I like SWITZERLAND'S POLITICAL SYSTEM OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY:

1. Constitutional Republic
2. Elected representative government
3. The electorate has a veto-right on laws
4. 2.5% of the population can call for a constitutional amendment

You could tweak these to work better in the US.

edit on 21-11-2011 by daskakik because: (no reason given)

Wow, just 2.5% can call for an amendment? Are you sure about that? They just calling for one, but not getting it, right?

I fear for all republics due to the huge money flying around can easily bribe any small group. Evil in this world wants centralized power that it can corrupt. Consequently we must distribute the power of the country through the populous to escape the bribing influences. Currently American government is bought off, plain and simple, and if we don't stop this we are going to go down while the globalists simply hop to another country. This is not an historical situation we are in.

This is the modern world, where there is no nationality anymore, no loyalty, no shame.

Originally posted by Ethericplane
Wow, just 2.5% can call for an amendment? Are you sure about that? They just calling for one, but not getting it, right?

Right that is just to have it voted on.

I fear for all republics due to the huge money flying around can easily bribe any small group. Evil in this world wants centralized power that it can corrupt. Consequently we must distribute the power of the country through the populous to escape the bribing influences.

That is what number three addresses. The people have veto power of laws so if someone pays to have a law pass the citizens can always veto it.

True Democracy is mob rule. "Direct Democracy' in this context is mob rule on steroids. There are no upsides to a 50% + 1 to win system if you aren't living in the major population centers.

The United States was formed as a Representative Republic, not a Democracy in the true sense for precisely this reason. In their wisdom, our forefathers could see the problems of scale and the Republic concept is the only one that works over the long term. It's serve us quite well this long.

We already have dead people, illegal aliens and felons who haven't been restored voting in national elections and this is when showing up IS required. I cannot begin to imagine the fraud it would bring us if citizens didn't even have to show up anymore. The sad statement it would make about how apathetic our society has become about the whole thing is another issue, but no less important.

reply to post by Ethericplane


Our Founding Fathers set up our Constitution and our country as a Republic, and now all these OWS supporters want a direct democracy. Wanna change our system eh, get rid of Capitalism, usher in a new era of proletariat worker control. Yep communism is makin a comeback.