"Citizen-Led" Decision-Making

[ZiprHead]

Honestly, rights shouldn't be held to a popular vote.

Like the Supreme Court?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Honestly, rights shouldn't be held to a popular vote.

Like the Supreme Court?

In general, SCOTUS had been doing pretty well with that for a century... and then the Roberts court took over.

 

[RVonse]

I notice all "no" votes so far to Lumpy's poll despite how poorly written his "no" choices of the poll are. A credit to all members of this forum who have voted so far. Rightfully showing us how important it is for guard rails to protect against mob democracy rule.

This was a seriously important consideration back when the US was founded. But I would believe even more important if/when AI becomes more and more prevalent in our society. Representative democracy will steer important decisions away from electronic (hackable) votes to the actual humans that were elected to office.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

What is the prejudice against "direct democracy"?

Simple test: initiative petitions. They're typically garbage.

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.

I do not like our system but doing it directly is worse.

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.

For some functions "direct democracy" would work better. It's not true that elected speech-makers are always best at making the important decisions. We should not rule out experimentation as a way to find what works, and also not entrench into power the current political party system with its flaws. It's unscientific to dismiss any possible change from being considered, as an alternative, and make a religion out of the current system.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

What is the prejudice against "direct democracy"?

You appear to be overly optimistic about the intelligence of the "average citizen" and their ability to identify misinformation.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

What is the prejudice against "direct democracy"?

You appear to be overly optimistic about the intelligence of the "average citizen" and their ability to identify misinformation.

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.

 

[Shadowy Man]

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.

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.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

What is the prejudice against "direct democracy"?

You appear to be overly optimistic about the intelligence of the "average citizen" and their ability to identify misinformation.

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.

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.

 

[ZiprHead]

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.

Yes, they are.

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.

 

[bilby]

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.

Direct democracy is this:



Of course, that might in some cases be no worse than letting in a qualified pilot who wants to kill everyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

But in general, it's best not to let ignorant fuckwits have the biggest voice, just because they are a majority of citizens.

And as with most ideas, both extremes are awful. The OP's insistence that we must choose between one extreme or the other is tiresome and puerile, but ironically is a perfect exemplar of why we must not let ordinary people like him have too much say in how things are done.

 

[Swammerdami]

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.
. . .

Yesterday my son told me he'd learned a new word: kakistocracy. But he used the word in connection with the incompetence here in the Siamese Constitutional Kingdom, rather than with the Fascists and Tea-baggers who've usurped what was once called the "Greatest Democracy."

If I believed in astrology, I'd think USA and Thailand have similar horoscopes. The Democratic Parties there and here both had smart young good-spirited leaders of the Democratic Party win key elections in 1992 and 2008. The red-shirt criminal won election in 2000 at almost the same time as GWB came to power. The present governments are each summarized by stupidity as much as corruption.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Is "direct democracy" today a failure?
What "direct democracy"?

Has it led to some bad results? What bad results?

The founders did not want direct democracy, we can see why in today's politics.

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?

Probably no one will give an example. There are no facts here, but only prejudice against "direct democracy" or against a term which people have been taught to revile for some reason.

I suggest the closest we have to "direct democracy" today is our jury system. Has our jury system been a failure? Has it led to some bad results? This is a system which has ordinary citizens who are selected randomly -- not speech-maker politicians -- make important decisions for our society. (In some ways it's even analogous to the "Democracy" practiced in Athens.) We could instead have this function performed by elected professional jurors, who would run for office and give speeches to large audiences in order to win votes, and be elected as representatives, rather than this function being done by regular citizens-at-large without professional training and experience selling themselves to voters the way politicians are selected for their decision-making function.

So, would the latter elected-politician-system be better? Why? Would the founders or framers of our Constitution be alarmed at our jury system today, which allows ordinary citizens do this function -- somewhat like the Athenians did -- rather than speech-maker politicians selling themselves to voters?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Who would participate in "Direct Democracy"?
"participate" = make decisions

What are the exact rules?
Do all citizens participate and vote or are citizens selected?

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.

The only ones excluded are those who don't care and so don't show up. (Maybe they will change their mind later and decide to show up.)

Whoever participates would have to "show up" -- so possibly the need to "show up" would be an obstacle. But the "show up" requirement can be made easy by allowing total flexibility in the timing. So those wanting to participate would have to show up at a designated location, but not at a designated time -- the time scheduling could be easily adjusted to accommodate all those who show up, at whatever time.

This is the general answer to Who participates? Limits or selectiveness might be decided upon, but that need not be part of the process initially. The general pattern should be of openness to everyone who wants to participate, without a selection process which excludes people of certain categories.

Whereas the conventional system of decision-making (such as our representative democracy) is that the only ones qualified to make decisions are special speech-makers who persuade audiences and voters with their oratorical skills, and only these are qualified to make decisions for society, and all others are excluded as inferior, meaning that 99% of humans are deemed unfit, because they lack the oratorical talent to manipulate audiences. (E.g., Trump's ability to manipulate large audiences in a stadium (or on TV) is what qualifies him = the basis for representative democracy + Leader/President/Fuhrer.)

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Direct Democracy = everyone participates equally

vs.

Representative Democracy = unequal power elites emerge, dominate and impose their narrow agenda for a select wealthy few

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.

Those aren’t features of democracy.

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.

They’re corrupt add-ons (e.g. Citizens United) designed and implemented by and for the wealthy, . . .

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.

. . . implemented by and for the wealthy, in order to . . .

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.

So the corrupt system which emerges in representative democracy is a power elite consortium of wealthy interests who succeed in coming together and prevailing to impose their program onto society, promoting the interests of this particular coalition of wealthy interests, in disregard for those below them who are much less powerful, disunited and powerless to protect their interests from being crushed by the wealthy power-elite which emerges.

. . . in order to usurp the powers originally intended to be exercised by The People.

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.

 

[robnisch]

If you have a well-informed citizenry.
The Founders may have been elitist, but they were realist.
The average citizen was too busy just surviving let alone know what was going on in the rest of the world.
Not much has changed in 250 years.

 

[laughing dog]

In this hypothetical direct democracy, who frames the referenda or decides what decisions are important?

I ask, because it seems to me that at some point, a subgroup/elite is part of the process.

 

[Elixir]

Small tribes work much better.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

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.

Yes, they are.

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.

No, the Constitution says nothing about "districts" or "redistricting." There are federal laws about making the districts equal, but none requiring states to have districts. They all do have districts anyway, but not because any law requires it.

In the first elections to Congress, in 1788, some states did not have any congressional districts. Instead they had state-wide candidates elected at-large, so voters could choose from among all the state candidates instead of only candidates for their particular district. New Hampshire and New Jersey had no congressional districts. https://earlyamericanelections.org/maps/

Nothing prevents states from experimenting with something different. Like having state-wide candidates, elected from voters anywhere in the state, without the need to belong to this or that district.

We don't always have to accept the existing system as the only acceptable way something can be done, and pretend that it's handed down from on high as a mandate or Law of Nature.

 

[ZiprHead]

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.

Yes, they are.

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.

No, the Constitution says nothing about "districts" or "redistricting." There are federal laws about making the districts equal, but none requiring states to have districts. They all do have districts anyway, but not because any law requires it.

In the first elections to Congress, in 1788, some states did not have any congressional districts. Instead they had state-wide candidates elected at-large, so voters could choose from among all the state candidates instead of only candidates for their particular district. New Hampshire and New Jersey had no congressional districts. https://earlyamericanelections.org/maps/

That was before the 14th amendment, doofus.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

"amateurs" vs. "professionals"

Running a country isn't a job for amateurs.

It's not a "job" for anyone. There should be no such thing as someone "running a country," unless that "country" is some private fief, perhaps a privately-owned island, or a privately-owned gated community of a few thousand residents who can easily move somewhere else if they need something different.

What we mean by "country" is a place which should not be "run" by a particular group or clique which imposes its program on everyone in the country.

It's OK to say it should be run by "the people" -- this seems to be a legitimate concept, but who are "the people"? What's the best example of a country being run by "the people"? It's not clear. So it sounds right, but that's not good enough -- we need to have more detail about how "the people" are going to run the country.

We need professional politicians; And they need to be selected from a pool of qualified candidates.

"qualified"? like graduates from the Social Engineering Academy? run by whom? by which Technocrats?

"professional"? like today's political party bosses who have dominated for a long time? and are well-paid (in some ways that are dubious)? What makes them "qualified"?

By some criteria, nations like Germany and Denmark and Switzerland are the best governed. But also Singapore is ranked high for efficiency. Definitely if there is such a thing as professional standards based on PERFORMANCE of the gov't in serving the citizens, then these countries might be checked, to determine what they're doing right. But maybe there are special conditions there which are dissimilar to the U.S.A. and other countries.

And the word "expert" might be preferable to "professional," because what's important is their level of knowledge, education, and ability to perform in solving problems and fixing things that are wrong in the nation. But not their long career in politics and getting elected and giving speeches and courting favor from those in power (and also shoving people around, slamming them against the wall like the "professional" LBJ was skilled at doing). How does that career of power-wielding make them more "qualified"? other than at manipulating people? So we need to be careful with the word "professional" which might just refer to their illustrious career in serving special interests and wielding power and manipulating people to promote their narrow agenda and make themselves rich.


"the people" vs. "the experts"

What should be the relation between "the people" and the "professionals" (or preferably the experts)? It's OK to say there's an important difference between those who have more knowledge or ability (expertise) and those who are only "amateurs" without experience or expertise.

Let's assume this distinction is important -- but then, what is the proper relation of these two to each other? There's more need for "the people" to be in the process somewhere. Does it make sense to say that "the people" should just stay out of it and only "vote" for the candidate-speech-maker who is the most impressive?

No, just voting for "the demagogue of your choice" is not good enough. (Or rather "the candidate of your choice" for political correctness.)

The proper role of the expert is to answer questions, so that "the people" become better informed and can better understand what's going on. So the experts should be in a role where they are questioned by those needing more facts -- by "the people" -- and especially are confronted with the difficult questions, and not allowed to evade questions but are required to explain the matters which are being decided.

So, whatever the process, where "the people" and the experts do the important decision-making, it has to be one which requires the experts to disseminate more knowledge to "the people" -- to answer questions, so that some decisions come out of it which are based on the increased knowledge. As opposed to the present decision-making based on speech-making and preaching at the mindless masses. (Such as that of the current President, but also others earlier who did the same thing but who didn't do it as well.)

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 this assumption was wrong, obviously, not only recently, but even going way back. It was wrong because the "professionals" becoming "candidates" did not have to answer the questions, but were shielded from being questioned critically, which critical questioning would have weeded out the duds who are good only at pretense but not at substance. The way to correct this is to subject all of them to some very tough questioning ordeals, where they have to spend many hours answering critical questions from skeptics who demand good answers, and who can cross-examine these ones promoting themselves to candidacy or other position of power.

It's not only "their parties" who must question those seeking power, but anyone in the public who wants to question them, who steps forward and announces that they want to participate in the process of questioning those seeking power. And of course questioning from professional journalists too has to be part of it, but "the people" participants must also assume their role in the questioning -- the professional journalists sometimes avoid some difficult questions which aren't supposed to be asked. What we need is a totally transparent process where candidates or experts seeking power are forced to respond to the most difficult questions, which they generally are able to avoid answering.

So, let the power-seeking experts or "professionals" go through a rigorous screening process of being questioned by "the people" who themselves might not have the expertise to directly make the decisions. But also allow some process of "the people" becoming more knowledgeable, through questioning or other truth-seeking, and thus becoming able to also make some of the decisions directly.

And that informal qualification process avoids many of the potential outfalls [pitfalls?] inherent in a formal qualification process.

formal or informal -- Either qualification process is flawed because the would-be "professionals" seeking power don't have to answer questions from ordinary citizens, but only have to give effective speeches to passive listeners/audiences who are only harangued and manipulated by the speech-makers, maybe entertained by them, who care only about making a good impression or doing a good show for the audience, because their main expertise is in giving effective speeches (to stampede voters this way or that).

Direct democracy is this:

View attachment 51860

No, this is not direct democracy. This is more of the speech-maker democracy we already have. Those who are the most charismatic or the most aggressive seize power. Direct democracy means everyone participates directly in exercising the power, with no select cadre of speech-makers deciding for others. I.e. "the people" directly make the decisions.

This literally has nothing to do with who flies the plane, which is a false analogy. The original example is about who performs the job of redistricting. So a system is proposed for having this job done directly by citizens (maybe randomly chosen, similar to jurors) who would be nonpartisan, or separate from the politicians/speech-makers who are a select partisan class who are incapable of being objective in drawing the lines.

Congressman Talerico used the term "citizen-led independent redistricting process" to describe his plan for redistricting, which would have citizens draw the lines rather than the politicians. He didn't make it clear how these "citizens" are chosen, but obviously they cannot be appointed by either Party or by Party members. Maybe it would be by some random selection process similar to the way jurors are chosen. Or more likely someone appoints them who is seen to be nonpartisan, having a position totally independent of any Party connection. Whatever it is, the point is for the choices to be made completely independent of anything connected to those in power, which might be difficult actually.

There's probably no total guarantee of keeping it nonpartisan. Anything connected to someone in power, having influence or authority near the legislative branch or any elected official causes the process to be tainted, making it less credible.

It's best if some lottery system, or random-selection process is relied on to choose the participants.


the need to make sure fuckwits are excluded

But in general, it's best not to let ignorant fuckwits have the biggest voice, just because they . . .

. . . we must not let ordinary people like him have too much say in how things are done.

Petty squabbling over who has "the biggest voice" or "too much say" is a big part of what's wrong, and the way to stop such pettiness is a process which is essentially equal, or gives to no one any more "voice" than another.

So experiments in "direct democracy" should be structured in such a way that the participants in it are treated all the same, with no one given any more power than another. This should be the initial premise.

E.g., suppose there is some kind of "meeting" and there has to be "facilitator" or "chairperson" chosen. If someone in charge makes that choice, then there is bias of some kind, something unequal happening to favor the one chosen. Yet, if it's essential to have this choice made, there might be a lottery system of some kind which makes the choice completely at random, so one is picked out, but not because of any special power someone had which another did not have.

So the right premise is that the procedure goes forward by a method which basically favors no one, and all the participants are treated equally, with no one having any more power than another.