Direct Democracy scheme

Great Debates
1

There’ve been several threads already on why the U.S. isn’t a democracy because it’s not a direct democracy (i.e., people don’t vote directly for elected positions, etc.). Most such threads break down because proponents of direct democracy can’t propose a workable solution to the technical and social problems inherent in any such scheme.

So I’m driving home, and an answer to the objections I usually raise to such schemes comes to me, and I’d like to explore the idea. Picture the following system implemented in the U.S.:

[list=1]
[li] Every person either has a computer and modem, or access to one (e.g., at a public library or government building).[/li]
[li] The U.S. government (the elections commission, I suppose) provides a website where citizens may vote for any issue successfully placed on the ballot. Certain ballots, such as elections to office, would be automatically included; other issues could be resolved by a legislative body proposing a nationwide (statewide, countywide, etc.) ballot; referendums could be placed on the ballot by interested parties in the same way they are now, by collected a required minimum of signatures in a petition drive.[/li]
[li] Assume, for the sake of argument, that a viable security mechanism exists to provide reasonable guarantees of one citizen, one vote (e.g., one’s social security card is a smartcard–the card itself verifies your thumbprint, which is imprinted at the time it’s issued, which could be done at the DMV outlets, and then you swipe your social security card in a card reader attached to the computer, which transmits your secure I.D. without submitting biometric data). Reasonable guarantees means at least as strong a guarantee as exists with our current system, though it could be stronger with the right mechanisms in place.[/li]
[li] On the website, you may vote for federal, state, municipal, or any other relevant election or referenda. The presented ballots would be customised to you, listing the ballots in which you have a legitimate interest (e.g., your state issues, not others).[/li]
[li] Each issue is presented in synopsis, and contains links to reference material provided by interested parties, allowing you to do as much or as little research as you want to inform yourself on an issue. Because the reference material is included as part of a government agency’s website, laws governing the presentation of reference material could be easily passed and enforced (e.g., libelous and defamatory material is automatically excluded; opponents could challenge reference material provided by the other, with challenges to be arbitrated by the elections commission).[/li]
[li] Citizens are not required to vote, but an election is not considered resolved until a justifiable portion of the relevant electorate has voted. A presidential election could be considered unresolved until 100,000,000 votes have been cast, which avoids the problem of forced votes cast casually, and would cause candidates to stress the simple act of voting. I expect many people would be more motivated to vote if a presidential election had gone unresolved for a couple weeks; a set period for voting could decide the issue–if not enough votes have been collected, the ballot is dropped and the status quo remains. It would also give proponents of an issue an incentive to actively collect voters who might be otherwise disenfranchised–both the ‘yes’ side and the ‘no’ side could send out their volunteers to collect the homeless, for example, and both would be interested in doing so, lest the other side get more time in the bus with the voters.[/li]
[li] The tally of any particular ballot is held with utmost secrecy until an election is considered resolved.[/li]
[li] Votes would, of course, not be recorded by voter, but the fact that a particular voter did vote would have to be recorded, which forms the basis for incentives for voting such as tax credits. Perhaps “good citizen” awards could be presented to someone who voted on every single ballot for a year.[/li]
[li] With the proper equipment, namely a computer, modem, and whatever security equipment is required (such as the aforementioned card-reader, which could be obtained from the elections commission for a nominal cost), one could vote from one’s home.[/li]
[li] Voting is a perpetual service offered by the elections commission, available 24/7, 365 days a year. Certain campaigns could be scheduled for particular periods (e.g., in Canada, federal elections allow campaigning only in the month preceding the election), but at all times there could be ballots on which one could vote, which permits someone like me, at least, to make a weekly visit, say, to check out what’s up for my vote.[/li]
[li] No spoiled votes, no questionable chads, no idiosyncracies of particular voting machines, no feisty scrutineers, no ballot boxes to lose, misplace, or stuff. Every ballot could include an option to abstain, allowing one to vote for “none of the above”.[/li]
[li] The mechanism for ballots is unified nationwide, as is the mechanism for registering voters, thus avoiding most of the weirdness of Florida.[/li]
[li] The act of voting could be made pretty dummy-proof: you get a list, you check the box, and the computer immediately provides feedback and asks for confirmation on your vote (e.g., “you must vote for three candidates; you’ve only checked two boxes”, “This vote will be cast for candidate X; OK / change vote”).[/li]
[/list=1]

I think this scheme has a lot going for it. Were it implemented nation-wide, the convenience of voting and researching issues would certainly make a significant portion of the population more involved in issues at all levels. It also includes incentives for campaigners to actively solicit voters to the simple act of voting. It mitigates the problem of casual voters being overwhelmed with ballots by easing the whole procedure, by spreading it out over periods of time, and by making it in the interests of the campaigners to inform the public of the issues rather than run a popularity contest. It also provides for a more media-neutral forum in which the issues of whatever campaign could be presented in an arbitrary, structured fashion that, I believe, could have the effect of decreasing the role that money plays in deciding a ballot–I think that, were I to get in the habit of researching and voting at this hypothetical website, I would be more inclined to ignore campaign ads on TV and radio in favour of whatever facts I could ingest on my own.

What do you think?

2

Eh, it breaks down right at #1. The Internet’s going to remain a toy for the upper and middle classes for a long time to come, as long as you have to pay for the equipment, AND the telephone line, AND the ISP. We have TV sets in every home nowadays because all you gotta do is bring it home from Wal-Mart and plug it in. But if, before you could use your TV, you had to have your cable account all set up and paid for, then a lot fewer people would have TVs.

I know people who have trouble paying for a regular phone line, let alone paying for Internet access.

And if you get past that, there’s #3. There’s no such thing as a truly un-hackable security system. Even Microsoft gets hacked. “What man has done, man can do.” If a programmer can set it up, another programmer can get into it. No way would I trust the American electoral system to a Net-only voting booth system.

And if you get past THAT, there’s #6.

Who’s going to define “a justifiable portion of the relevant electorate”? Also, are you going to go by “simple majority”? Two-thirds? Who’s going to decide that?

I would expect an INCREDIBLE amount of arm-twisting, not to mention direct personal threats of bodily harm, would be the “motivation” for people to vote if a presidential election had gone unresolved for longer than, say, overnight. Smith is behind? Send out the legbreakers to get out the vote for Smith. There’s a reason there are election laws stipulating that elections have to be completed in a certain time fram–so as to avoid precisely this kind of thing.

They did this after the Civil War, in the South. The Carpetbaggers went around and gathered up all the mostly illiterate former slaves, now freed blacks, gathered them up by the wagonload, gave them liquor, escorted them to the polls, and told them how to vote. Chicago aldermen do the same sort of thing today, except that they’re much more discreet about it. They just call it “getting out the vote”, but one way or another, they “actively collect voters” and make damn sure they vote, and for the right candidate.

And, you think this is a good thing?

Or until somebody hacks into the database.

How not? Of course it would be in the database who you had voted for. What, you think your vote would just go “X” for Smith and then be lost in the ether? No way. That’s not how computers work. If it’s on the Internet, it’s public.

No public scrutiny? No public discussion? And you think this is a good thing?

Yes, but can it be made toddler-proof? Or child-proof? Or teenager-proof? Right now a sizeable check on the validity of voting procedures is that there’s no way for kids to accidentally vote. They don’t have a way to get down to the polling place, for one thing. So under your system, a teenager with access to Daddy’s swipe card could use Daddy’s vote while Daddy was in the shower.

IMO, your system would only work in a completely controlled totalitarian “bar code in the forehead” Logan’s Run kind of society, and I can’t see America going for that.

3

Thus my inclusion of public voting facilities: a workstation or three in a library, a couple more at city hall, and maybe a few in a van over a satellite connection to make rural calls. The “home voting” portion would be a convenience feature to increase participation by removing reasons of hassle. It’s not in any sense necessary to the larger scheme, just a bonus. We already provide public voting facilities when necessary. All that would be required is to update the technology in use there.

First, I think it’s currently possible to provide the same level of security we have now in elections, which isn’t extreme. If this scheme could be implemented with only that much security, then the other benefits would make it worth adopting.

Second, there’s security, and then there’s security. Microsoft gets hacked because security is a third-hand concern for them; at worst, it’s a PR problem. Microsoft has never been known for the security of its products. Does the NSA get hacked? OpenBSD has gone four years without a root exploit. Sufficient security is certainly possible.

Whatever defines a quorum in an election now. What would we do if only 20 million people voted in a presidential election?

I suggested that a certain time frame could be set for any ballot; failure to meet the quorum would defeat the ballot, or in the case of certain ballots, special measures would kick in. If only 20 million people voted for president, I would hope that we’d have some other option than taking the loser who got only 10,000,001 votes, by digital or paper ballot.

So party X runs a van to collect the homeless and drop them at city hall, where they’re escorted to a private voting booth where no one can see how they vote. If they require assistance using the machine, it’s provided by a neutral civil servant standing on the other side of the monitor.


BEGIN TRANS

INSERT INTO Voters ( Election, SSN )
VALUES ( '2004 Presidential Election', '999-99-9999' );

INSERT INTO Votes ( TimeStamp, Zip_Code, Candidate )
VALUES ( 'October 15, 2004 10:14:45 AM', '53154', 'Dubya' );

COMMIT TRANS

It would be a bit more complicated than that, but it’s a trivial programming exercise to record the fact that citizen X cast a vote in an election, and to separately record the vote itself, and to do so in a way that guarantees that both are recorded, or neither.

Who said there’d be no public discussion? Who said there couldn’t be public scrutiny of the votes once they were cast and the balloting closed?

Each vote could be timestamped and geographically located (perhaps the zip code of the voter’s home address), and stored individually, which allows perfect public scrutiny. The table of votes cast could even be made available for download over the Internet so that anyone with a minimal knowledge of SQL could count the votes themselves, or check that Assdunk, Arkansas didn’t cast 20 million votes for one candidate.

Part of what made the scheme plausible to me is that I’ve seen presentations of biometric identification systems that don’t require biometric data like fingerprints or retinal scans to be stored or even submitted for verification. The smartcard system to which I’m referring has the biometric verification in the card itself: say, your thumbprint. To use the card to send your authorization, the card must sense your thumbprint on the sensor, in which case the card submits a digital key that can be instantly verified against the issuing authority’s records. Your thumbprint doesn’t go into a database, and no one else can use your smartcard. This is all viable technology that exists in prototype form today.

Given a convenient scheme for collecting votes, it also becomes far, far easier to cancel the results and rerun the balloting if something improper happens, such as the tally of votes cast doesn’t match the number of voters recorded. There are far more convenient checks on the balloting available in digital form than there are now, where any scrutineering requires a massive manpower effort.

{line breaks added to fix sidescroll. --Gaudere}

[Edited by Gaudere on 12-01-2001 at 07:46 PM]

4

Well, now, seems with this concept we’re halfway there. Where? There? Yes, there. To simply casting popular votes for every referendum, citizen initiative(we have lots of them here in Washington anyway), poll, legislation. Let’s just thin out the ranks of our elected officials and go strictly for the popular vote. Majority rules, right? Well, I imagine the courts might have a say in that, just as fast as they can whip out their copy of the Constitution.

Can I be the first to say there’s no way in heck I’d want a popular vote system in place in this country? Not only that, I’m actually glad less than 50% of those eligible take the time and effort to vote in Presidential elections. I’m not that much of an egalitarian that I believe for one moment that everyone is equally capable of rendering a competent, informed vote on any given subject. Just take a look at the drivers all around you everyday on the freeway. I mean, really!

I say, let 'em stay home if they want. Good for them. And for us. If it’s true that we get the government we deserve, I’m scared plenty already.

Seriously, though. I like much of your OP regarding voter access. Would need the gaps and chinks filled in, but it’s a good start. Some examples: mechanisms in place to assure vote calibrations recorded and tallied properly, foreign languages also available, the illiterate would vote…how?Then with regard to your requiring consistent voting procedures, bear in mind that this is a State’s Rights issue, and as such is in sticky territory when the Feds put their two cents in. As above, I can see it getting way out of hand, and the first to go…Electoral College. Not a good thing. But that’s a whole 'nother thread.

5

Do you have something against the concept of division of labor in general, or there a reason why in this particular instance it’s not good?

6

Oh, The Ryan, who ya talkin’ to? Division of labor regarding…?

7

re: the OP –

It is a good start. It isn’t enough in the long run, but it would be a substantial improvement over what we’ve got going for us now. If you campaign on a platform of implementing this change, you’ve got my vote.

We could start electing orators and political philosophers to office, since the only thing making them different from us would be their opportunity to make good speeches in attempts to influence the way the rest of us vote.

In the long run, though, I’d want something more democratic than the majority-rules vote, and I would want to be as included in any discussion that affected me as I wanted to be.

8

NaSultainne, why do you feel that those who do vote are those who are most able to vote? There is no guarantee that voters are any more able, intelligent, or wiser than others. They certainly don’t need to be any more informed, as many of them could simply be voting the party line or for whoever struck their fancy. If voting patterns broke down by IQ then you’d might have a case, but that’s rarely if ever true.

I know I’m new here, but I’m reminded of what Hobbes said:

9

I don’t see anything inherent in the scheme necessitating majority rule voting. There are lots of different ways to decide a ballot: run-offs, ranked voting, etc., any of which could be easily implemented.

10

Ok, Demosthenesian, I can see my pitiful attempt at light-hearted absurdity failed on all accounts. That having been said, I do believe that those people who are motivated to vote are, for the most part, more involved in the process. To encourage those who, apparently, can’t be bothered to vote to now begin voting, isn’t as far as I can see going to have a beneficial impact on the voting results. Now, I don’t say this because of any one election season. Take a look at the last 40 years of Presidential elections and the majority of eligible voters stay home. You can’t argue from that basis that all of them meant to vote but RL got in the way. Some, sure. Not all. If they don’t care to vote, well, tell me an apathetic voter, or hell, LOTS of apathetic voters choosing your next President doesn’t worry you.

As regards intelligence as a marker of the voter v. non-voter, I don’t buy that distinction. I think voting and taking the time and effort to do so indicates determination, not some semblance of intelligence as a rule. I’d like to encourage voting, but not require given turnouts as the OP seemed interested in. That’s my point.

Back to the recent slurry of anti-majority rules comments. I was joking. Are some suggesting that other than a majority of voters should select our political leaders, pass/reject referendums, approve local levies? Now you guys are scaring me. I thought all the democratic/liberal types wanted a strict majority rules election process, hence my reference to possible elimination of the Electoral College.
Has something changed recently or is this a different political POV?

11

hansel

Legislating. Apparently hansel wants it to be done by amateurs.

12

Actually, NaSultainne, I had a pretty good idea you were joking. :smiley:

Actually, I’m not a huge fan of direct democracy myself. It’s not that people are too stupid to do it, but the whole point of representative democracy is choosing people to focus wholeheartedly on making policy based on general guidelines you chose as a voter. Direct democracy just hands control to people without the time and ability to properly research the laws and policy in question.

13

Sorry, I thought that you were addressing Nasultainne.

I’m not sure what the question means. The balloting scheme I’m proposing allows for the opening up of balloting in general to direct voting. This would allow removing certain intermediaries (e.g., the electoral college, which is of dubious value), but not all. It does not entail the abolishment of legislatures, Congress, or the Senate, which would continue to function the way they do now for the most part: someone needs to write the bills; someone needs to present the issues to the electorate. And frankly, there’s a lot of tedious work to politics that isn’t suitable to direct voting.

I imagine an increase in the number of referendums. I imagine a small to medium shift in the work of various legislative bodies from passing various bills to writing legislation and reference material for binding referendums. I imagine a graudal transition to greater involvement by the voters in the whole process as a growing number of issues are put to popular vote. I can’t imagine submitting everything to a popular vote until a lot of time has passed, and direct voting is a well-accepted part of the culture.

As a check on the electorate, I could see some requirement for having a referendum like we have now (i.e., a number of signatures on a petition).

Mainly I see a viable scheme for direct balloting by the electorate having the virtue of allowing greater involvement, more easily. Think of the quality of the debate on the SDMB; now imagine that this sort of debate can be a precursor to going to another website and voting on the issue. I see this form of direct voting reducing the anonymity and insignificance of going to the polls.