- Joined
- Oct 22, 2002
- Messages
- 46,173
- Location
- Frozen in Michigan
- Gender
- Old Fart
- Basic Beliefs
- Don't be a dick.
Like the Supreme Court?Honestly, rights shouldn't be held to a popular vote.
Like the Supreme Court?Honestly, rights shouldn't be held to a popular vote.
In general, SCOTUS had been doing pretty well with that for a century... and then the Roberts court took over.Like the Supreme Court?Honestly, rights shouldn't be held to a popular vote.
They don't have to be. If you just arbitrarily start from the premise that "initiative" measures/petitions have to be garbage, no matter what, you could also just assume that tyranny is the only thing that can ever work, and any kind of "democracy" is typically garbage. Look at the garbage our "democracy" is giving us now.Simple test: initiative petitions. They're typically garbage.
If "doing it directly" is worse, then the jury system is worse, and justice would be better served by having elected politician-jurors decide guilt and innocence, rather than jurors chosen randomly from the citizenry.I do not like our system but doing it directly is worse.
You appear to be overly optimistic about the intelligence of the "average citizen" and their ability to identify misinformation.What is the prejudice against "direct democracy"?
You're right. We should leave all decision-making to our Leaders (like Trump) and their appointees and the Party in power. They're the ones who know the real information vs. the misinformation.You appear to be overly optimistic about the intelligence of the "average citizen" and their ability to identify misinformation.What is the prejudice against "direct democracy"?
Then we just need to have the federal government get over the gerrymandering of the state boundaries, too. we need to get back to the "one person, one vote" ideal.Congressional "districts" are not required in the Constitution.
To fix this (to make it "fair") might require the abolition of the "districts" entirely and just allowing all voters to vote for ANYONE in the state, or from a list of ALL the candidates throughout the state. And each voter can be trusted to vote for someone probably near to them geographically (because it's in their interest), but still be free to make the choice without "district" boundaries being imposed upon them to put arbitrary limits on their free choice to pick who should represent them.
Why wouldn't that be more fair? I.e., to allow each voter maximum freedom to choose which candidate is best for him/her? Since every state suffers from this unfairness, and since it's not necessary (there are ways to elect House members without needing to impose the "district" boundaries onto all voters), it's certainly untrue that "We already have a process for fair redistricting."
Yes; that's the way to go. Use party lists, proportioned and transferable votes, etc. While you're at it, eliminate primaries or implement them as California does.
The Congressman-per-District idea is to provide a sort of "ombudsman" for his constituents, but that task can be separated from district alignment.
There are many possible ways this unfairness can be corrected. It's even possible to keep the "districts" generally, but still make it possible for some voters who are victimized by the system (in their individual case) to opt out of it and be allowed to vote for a candidate in a different "district" who would represent them better. This could be done at negligible cost, but those who are addicted to the current system are too callous to give any consideration to those made worse off by it and to any possible remedy to make it fair.
No! There are several reasons this is problematic. Go with your first proposal.
I don't claim either system doesn't work or one is better than the other. But it doesn't help that misinformation is so widespread and many believe it. That is a problem for all forms of democracy.You're right. We should leave all decision-making to our Leaders (like Trump) and their appointees and the Party in power. They're the ones who know the real information vs. the misinformation.You appear to be overly optimistic about the intelligence of the "average citizen" and their ability to identify misinformation.What is the prejudice against "direct democracy"?
Yes, they are.Congressional "districts" are not required in the Constitution.
To fix this (to make it "fair") might require the abolition of the "districts" entirely and just allowing all voters to vote for ANYONE in the state, or from a list of ALL the candidates throughout the state. And each voter can be trusted to vote for someone probably near to them geographically (because it's in their interest), but still be free to make the choice without "district" boundaries being imposed upon them to put arbitrary limits on their free choice to pick who should represent them.
congressional districts are mandated by the U.S. Constitution through requirements for equal population, though the specifics of how districts are drawn are not detailed in the Constitution itself. Article I, Section 2 and the Fourteenth Amendment require states to apportion their U.S. Representatives based on population, and the Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that districts must be of approximately equal population so that each vote carries equal weight. While the Constitution sets the foundational principle, Congress and federal laws, along with state laws and court decisions, provide the framework and details for the redistricting process.
Running a country isn't a job for amateurs.
We need professional politicians; And they need to be selected from a pool of qualified candidates.
Up until now, the assumption has been that unqualified candidates will be weeded out by their parties before they even get on a ballot; And that informal qualification process avoids many of the potential outfalls inherent in a formal qualification process.
. . .
We can? How? What is in "today's politics" that tells us why the founders did not want "direct democracy"? What does this refer to? This clearly implies that some kind of "direct democracy" today has led to a bad result which would have alarmed the founders. What is this bad outcome? And what "direct democracy" does this refer to?The founders did not want direct democracy, we can see why in today's politics.
The best selection system (who participates?) is self-selection. I.e., anyone who shows up and says "I want to participate" is automatically made a participant. It doesn't have to be limited to "citizens," although it can be if that's decided -- that's one of the decisions to be made. At the very beginning of the process it should be open to discussion who is allowed to participate in the decision-making, and being a "citizen" doesn't have to initially be a requirement to participate. And there's no reason to exclude prisoners or foreigners or any other group, maybe not even "minors" -- as long as someone has the maturity to "show up" and say they want to participate in the decision-making. Maybe they should be required to make an impromptu statement why they think it's important, or why they care.What are the exact rules?
Do all citizens participate and vote or are citizens selected?
They are features of "representative democracy" as it's now practiced. They are the alternative to direct democracy, which would let everyone participate directly and equally without being dependent on the speech-maker demagogues (representatives) we're stuck with in any kind of representative democracy.Those aren’t features of democracy.The referendum votes we have are run by aristocrats, who pay millions of $$$ to get their measures on the ballot, which would protect their aristocratic interests, and then those aristocrats fight it out with opposing aristocrats in the election -- it's not direct democracy.
Which is inevitable in representative democracy where an elite nucleus of speech-makers becomes instituted to rule over us and we're not allowed to address the public issues directly. Being dependent on representatives who give speeches ensures that the stronger demagogues will always seize and hold power, inevitably entrenching themselves in power, as the masses will be misled by the more aggressive speech-makers and deluded into yielding authority to them, uncritically, driven by a patriotic instinct to fall in line with the speech-maker Leader, or with the few Leaders who are most charismatic.They’re corrupt add-ons (e.g. Citizens United) designed and implemented by and for the wealthy, . . .
OK, by a certain wealthy few. Definitely a small powerful elite has to emerge, and this elite inevitably is wealthy. But not all wealthy are part of the elite which inevitably seizes power. Not "the wealthy," as though all the wealthy are united together in one single power elite which includes everyone wealthy, all the billionaires united together. Some of the wealthy are not part of the elite power structure which emerges, because there are differing wealthy interests, even among the most wealthy, and they are not 100% united together. They have some conflicting interests between them.. . . implemented by and for the wealthy, in order to . . .
And "exercised by The People" meaning EVERYONE in the society -- not a select few elected ones -- but everyone exercising powers distributed equally to all, without an elite few able to seize unequal power because they're more wealthy or more aggressive or more skillful at speech-making ability to manipulate audiences and thus seize power by getting more votes due to their superior speech-making talent and their sheer aggressiveness at seizing the public stage (such as Trump, but others also having similar talent), and then driving society toward their narrow interests rather than toward what is best for ALL the citizenry/population.. . . in order to usurp the powers originally intended to be exercised by The People.