But then again, it's a bit like making democracy easier by having only one party on the ballot? That is to say: Making things easier in a way that undermines the whole point of why you should be doing it in the first place kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
I am surprised by the people demanding election reform to be honest. In my mind that is the last thing you would want to do if integrity is questioned, since the changes would need political consent of every voter.
It could open up far more vectors to manipulate elections and the premise and is it true that people still are excluded from voting? Or is this just to shift voting weights in another direction?
You are right. I failed to thoroughly think it through.
But I think I would rather have a system where you need to intimidate and coerce people en masse in order to change the vote than a system where you just need to coerce the handful of people who are responsible for counting the vote.
I like the idea. The biggest problem would be to make it safe against voter intimidation/vote buying etc. by making it possible to build hierarchies of delegated votes small enough to chase down individuals.
I hold no judgment on what's going on here, other than I hope those who live in Thailand stay safe and well.
I will comment on the articles quote, about "one person one vote" being a bad state of affairs, as "uneducated rural voters" having too much power. This is something that I hear quite often in various places, and I've never quite understood it. Sure, I get the tyranny of the majority, but as far as I can see any other way of tackling voting is rife with even larger issues.
But I'm not 100% on that, so I wanted to open the floor to other opinions from those far smarter than me here on HN! Is it possible to restrict voting and end up with a fairer system?
Rather, it entrenches the power to the bland, indistinct body of politics as a whole, which expresses itself through numerous voting choices that are hard to distinguish from one another and are more less the same ideology, which can get large numbers of votes through choices that are only ostensibly distinct. It suppresses votes for choices that stand out from that group.
I don't think that is even necessary because the current voting systems already eliminate the fringes. For instance in many countries there is effectively a persistent two- or three-party system, even though other parties make an appearance.
Sure, I was just addressing my parent comment's proposal and providing more context.
I don't really care for it, although I will have to say it would probably work better in the case of opaque public bodies very few people vote for elections in (e.g. a local American school board)
Meh, nah. You can vote to further validate the legitimacy of an existing power structure. But voting, by itself, doesn't necessarily function as an act that reorganizes power structures. As an obtuse example, does voting in Russia or Venezuela help to reorganize power? At a certain point those that bestow the gift of voting upon a population also have the ability to limit the actual result of that vote.
I worry that making voting more complicated and giving people more candidates to vote for might actually backfire.
We already see this in American primary elections where the incumbent runs against a half dozen or more “nobodies” and seems to win on name recognition and vote splitting alone.
How important is this privilege if I can maliciously control how you vote?
Now imagine the good we can do with real electoral reform (Democrats idea of repealing citizens United is a meager start, but weak lip service to real reform)
Thank you vaporstun, that's exactly what I think as well. Delegating of votes is not a new idea, it's used in lots of societies - I got the idea from my housing cooperative. But it quickly gets out of hand after just one level of delegation, and if people are allowed to delegate their vote and then vote, well such a system has to be electronic.
As I said, I'm sure there are ways for ambitious politicians to game the system so please try!
As proposed, that seems sure to result in a series of unattractive-to-one-side legislation backed by 1 vote requiring the other side to use 2 votes to stop.
You could 2:1 amplify the power of your votes by creating a bullshit generator and the side with the most voluminous BS would end up with the only votes left.
This mechanism would be prone to abuse: a group that opposes a particular issue could effectively time that issue out to prevent a replacement group from pursuing it.
The adage about “being the worst system except for all the other ones” applies well here: your (and my) participation in democracy is a required component, not just a nice thing to have. Devising hacks around our participation will ultimately result in a system that doesn’t allow our participation.
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