Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elections are bad for democracy

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 86 posts

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#11

Post by reitanqild »

jerf wrote: post #8
humanrebar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides when someone has "come to grips" with a topic? I mean, anyone who disagrees with me obviously hasn't come to grips with the issue, right?

It's very similar to jury duty. And you'd try to use similar mechanisms to keep the system fair and balanced. And it would have similar failure cases, but "system without failure cases" isn't really on the table here.

Agree with humanrebar that this has some serious issues.

Compared to jury duty you'll face some serious scaling issues.

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#12

Post by milesf »

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

  - Winston Churchill, House of Commons, November 11, 1947

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#13

Post by halestock »

alain94040 wrote: post #5

I propose a simple fix for major elections such as referendums and presidential elections. I call it the "really?" approach: An election needs to get the same results twice back to back. So for instance, you could replace the primaries and November presidential elections with that system. Vote once: whoever is first needs to win the next round to become president. Candidates may decide to drop out, or not. The public…

I believe the technical term for this approach is called "bicameralism".

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#14

Post by AnimalMuppet »

f_allwein wrote: post #2

Bit long winded, but boils down to recommending sortition, which I had not heard of. Interesting: "With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really understand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision."

The problem is, if I wasn't selected, and the selected group reached the opposite decision from what I wanted, it's easy for me to feel like I wasn't listened to, no matter how well the group did their job. This is a political (or maybe psychological) problem, rather than one of "what's the best process?"

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#15

Post by steve19 »

alain94040 wrote: post #5

I propose a simple fix for major elections such as referendums and presidential elections. I call it the "really?" approach: An election needs to get the same results twice back to back. So for instance, you could replace the primaries and November presidential elections with that system. Vote once: whoever is first needs to win the next round to become president. Candidates may decide to drop out, or not. The public…

The result would be a very low turnout on the first vote, with a meaningless result that may or may not be representative of the entire population (because everyone knows the first vote is meaningless so why bother voting), followed by a large turnout on the second vote... and then followed by howling and wailing by which ever side loses and the demanding of a third referendum.

Interesting New Zealand recently had a double/two part referendum that was reported on Hacker News (due the the complexity of changing the National flag)

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#16

Post by iamgopal »

323454 wrote: post #4

Democracy has always been about the people being able to remove their leaders from power when they become egregiously bad. Kind of like evaporative cooling. The means by which they choose them is a second order consideration.

I always understood election as a kind of checking power over whoever is already at the power, the ultimate authority even above supreme court and president. Only problem is its not immediate but eventual. Can mass voting system replace such authority ? [ A robotic president, which will post questions for which decision needs to be taken for polling via internet, tons of people choose from the option. ]

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#17

Post by alienasa »

kristianc wrote: post #10

This sounds like a variation of Plato's Philosopher Kings, which uses the 'random sampling' argument to get around the obvious criticism of the elites being given the power. > The Ship of State is a famous and oft-cited metaphor put forth by Plato in Book VI of the Republic (488e–489d). It likens the governance of a city-state to the command of a naval vessel and ultimately argues that the only men fit to be captain…

Did you read the whole article? His most significant proposal is that modern democracies adjust their procedures to use something called "sortition" that dates back to ancient Greece.

In sortition, rather than polling the entire populace about complicated issues on which they are likely not well informed, we select a balanced random sample of people from the populace , provide them information, and then allow them to engage each other on the issue. Then we have those people vote.

This has several advantages:

1. It actually places "faith in a large number of people selected from all social backgrounds" depending on how large your sample, as opposed to letting elected politicians decide, which is the definition of "a small number of people selected from a potentially narrow social background".

2. It solves the problem where a huge number of people end up voting because of gut instinct or misinformation. Consider the passage of Proposition 13 in California which prohibits the raising of property taxes. If you poll the entire population, that referendum is going to win 100 times out of 100, because for most people the gut check decision is "no I don't want my taxes to go up". However, the correct way to consider that proposition is to get an understanding of how property taxes are used, how they are collected, what the procedures are for changing them in the legislature, etc. and then come to a determination. That determination might be "Yes", it might be "No", or it might be "we should not limit increases in property tax rates but instead limit increases to the real value of collected taxes, by accounting for changes in property values". [1]

[1] I'm not proposing that is the right answer, I'm just suggesting that you might arrive at that conclusion if you actually had time to study the issue. Almost by definition, the vast majority of people do not have that time.

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#18

Post by kristianc »

alain94040 wrote: post #5

I propose a simple fix for major elections such as referendums and presidential elections. I call it the "really?" approach: An election needs to get the same results twice back to back. So for instance, you could replace the primaries and November presidential elections with that system. Vote once: whoever is first needs to win the next round to become president. Candidates may decide to drop out, or not. The public…

You regularly see this happening in France with votes for the Front National and Marine Le Pen.

What tends to happen is the Far Right parties do quite well in the first round of voting, at which point the parties who have been eliminated cross political divides to encourage everyone to shun the Far Right. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire#In_politics).

It's hard to say whether, on balance, this is a useful exercise. The FN is able to use this approach to present itself as the voice of the 'anti-establishment' Party, everyone is able to use the first vote as a pressure valve to let off steam and vote FN knowing there won't be any consequences too it, and there's always the risk that voters tire of Cordon Sanitaire entirely and just vote the Far Right in in the second round anyway.

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#19

Post by reitanqild »

Now, where is the "wisdom of the crowds" when it comes to decisions that we, "the elites", don't like?

This annoys me. There is no doubt the result would have been "very fair" if it had been remain.

What we are seeing now is IMO hypocrisy and contempt of ordinary people at a scary level.

Now, did I want Brexit? No (I had no opinion). Do I think they should have requested more than 50% of the votes? As a conservative biased person I guess so, -don't take a risk unless there is clear demand, simple as a discriminator in electronics: you want to protect against bounces and wobbling...

- but this should have been said up front, not after losing.

Edit: upvoted this for the discussion, not for the original article.

Re: Elections are bad for democracy

#20

Post by kawera »

steve19 wrote: post #15
alain94040 wrote: post #5

I propose a simple fix for major elections such as referendums and presidential elections. I call it the "really?" approach: An election needs to get the same results twice back to back. So for instance, you could replace the primaries and November presidential elections with that system. Vote once: whoever is first needs to win the next round to become president. Candidates may decide to drop out, or not. The public…

The result would be a very low turnout on the first vote, with a meaningless result that may or may not be representative of the entire population (because everyone knows the first vote is meaningless so why bother voting), followed by a large turnout on the second vote... and then followed by howling and wailing by which ever side loses and the demanding of a third referendum. Interesting New Zealand recently had a…

Unless you make voting in the first vote a pre-condition to vote on the second vote.
Post reply on HN