Monday, August 3, 2015

Scott Adams Blog — What is Better Than a Republic?


Digital voting scheme.

Scott Adams Blog
What is Better Than a Republic?
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

6 comments:

Random said...

http://gawker.com/call-donald-trumps-cell-phone-and-ask-him-about-his-imp-1720472577

Random said...

We may be able to impart knowledge about MMT to The Donald ;)

Dan Lynch said...

Interesting suggestion from Adams, worthy of consideration, but it strikes me as complicated and easily abused. The option to delegate your vote could easily lead to votes being bought.

I very much like the notion of direct democracy but the question is how to make it workable.

There's the Swiss method, copied by some U.S. states, where citizens must petition to get an issue placed on the ballot. The petition process is difficult enough to keep the number of ballot issues manageable.

The problem with the Swiss method is that while it's possible for a grass roots movement to collect the petition signatures, it doesn't happen very often because it requires a lot of volunteer work and organization. In practice state referendums have been dominated by conservative special interests because they have the money and organization to make it happen.

I think it would be better to mandate that all "big" issues be placed on the ballot. Basically exempt little stuff like naming post offices but anything that requires large appropriations or taxes, anything that involves civil rights, and anything that involves foreign policy should be on the ballot.

It would be better still if there were ranked choice voting for ballot issues. For example, instead of a yes or no vote on the budget, we could rank our preference for the Democratic budget vs. Republican budget vs. Green budget, etc..

There would be no need to call a separate election for each issue, and thus no need to rely on the internet for voting. A routine annual election would suffice and paper ballots would work fine. Voting by mail would work even better because voters would have time to carefully read and research each issue.

When was the last time Congress did something so urgent than it couldn't wait a few months? The only thing I can think of would be a declaration of war and Congress no longer bothers with those, anyway.

Random said...

"dominated by conservative special interests because they have the money and organization to make it happen. "
Yeah Dan the Swiss have had a referendum on the gold standard a few times... Crazy.

mike norman said...

Wow! Donald Trump's cell number!

Peter Pan said...

Don't call him collect ;)