Do we really need politicians in this modern age?

Why do we need representation by politicians that are more often than not found to be lying, promise breaking, over paid puppets?

With modern technology, why not have SMS / E-Mail based votes or an online forum poll system where you get a text notifying you that there is a poll taking place on [insert subject matter of legislation being proposed here].

You then can visit the link there are some pages of info and links supplied by the community with information supporting both sides of each topic. The forum would work using a Stars system where the order of posts would be altered based upon the stars given to each post.

There would be a split section so you can also see the most recent posts on the right hand side so no new posts would be missed, but the most informative posts would be easy to find as they would be on the left hand side.

A simple forum style poll would be at the top where the public cast their vote. IF a piece of legislation does not receive over 75% of the total countries voting population's votes.. it would be put on hold until enough votes were received OR if too much time had passed, it would be locked and archived.

The public could nominate an E-Mail address /E-mail addresses they wish to be notified about new legislation on.. or via their mobile phones.

If people want true democracy, then surely this is the way to go. There are of cause the concerns by some people that they would get spammed with new legislation day in day out...

This can be avoided by voters specifying how many initial votes must have been cast before they are to be notified about the legislation. (it'd be as a percentage of the total population of available voters).

Once you get an SMS or Email.. you click on the link.. it takes you to the topic.. you can read information relating to it or see newly added information... then you make a vote on the poll

poll ends..

dominant vote wins..

It'd cost roughly what we pay in wages to these politicians and then we could have the community bring up new leglisation they want in.. and have the country vote it in or out so it would be a country lead by the people.

and there we have it.. true democracy ~~

reply to post by JaxCavalera



A techno-mobocracy huh? Carefull what you wish for...

Although politicians have a long track record of making poor choices, I'm not convinced that the "popular vote", every single time, is a better method.


Also, by sheer numbers alone, the population simply dont have time to examine these things...

What Happened in the 110th Congress?
Total number of bills introduced: 11059 (3724 in Senate, 7335 in House)

link

The only people who could have the time to vote would be those employed by large corporations to do so, full time. (Much the same system as now, really

Originally posted by JaxCavalera
IF a piece of legislation does not receive over 75% of the total countries voting population's votes.. it would be put on hold

Looking at wikipedia, the voter turnout in Presidential elections isnt much more than 50 percent.
Under your "75 percent" rule, nothing would ever happen, ever again.

reply to post by JaxCavalera


Security? Who wants a vote like this to be hacked, falsely used etc. How easy is it to fabricate favourable results with this? The current system is seen as misleading to some, this would be a total farce if it could be hacked/broken etc.

Originally posted by BULLPIN
reply to post by JaxCavalera

 

A techno-mobocracy huh? Carefull what you wish for...

I think we are as humans often afraid of the unknown and of change. This isn't a step towards the one world government, it's a step away from it.

There is a stigma out there that it is somehow easier to hack into a highly secured website than it would be to physically botch up a poll or vote system.

The majority of incidents where bank accounts have been "hacked" are where it was an inside job. Which means that often times, it was physical access (usually carelessly leaving important details for staff , family, friends to find) that allowed the criminal/s to obtain virtual access to funds.

If the online banking sector is now more secure than the physical banking sector with respect to the opportunities for financial theft, who's to say that a voting system couldn't be just as secure?

Originally posted by alfa1

Although politicians have a long track record of making poor choices, I'm not convinced that the "popular vote", every single time, is a better method.


Also, by sheer numbers alone, the population simply dont have time to examine these things...

What Happened in the 110th Congress?
Total number of bills introduced: 11059 (3724 in Senate, 7335 in House)

link

The only people who could have the time to vote would be those employed by large corporations to do so, full time. (Much the same system as now, really

I believe that there are always people from all sides of impactful debates that would have the time to research and post logical and useful information that would be quickly made available using the star priority system. If we look at ATS to be a pre-decessor of what could be used for passing down legislation. You get a variety of people that do the research and those that do not. It becomes clear who are reliable sources and who are not.

Perhaps there might also be an overall rating system for reliability of information awarded so those providing what is found or thought to be false information will quickly get a bad rep... and those that provide proven solid evidence.. will get a good rep... kinda of like the Ebay Seller Ratings system.

Originally posted by JaxCavalera
IF a piece of legislation does not receive over 75% of the total countries voting population's votes.. it would be put on hold

Looking at wikipedia, the voter turnout in Presidential elections isnt much more than 50 percent.
Under your "75 percent" rule, nothing would ever happen, ever again.

This is a very good point you raise, I was simply pulling a figure out that I felt would imply more than half the population of available voters had in fact cast a vote. I think this high figure I have presented could in fact be lowered.

That being said, with the ease of access to vote being much quicker and simpler to do than a physical or mail poll, there is a very good chance that those figures would improve significantly under the presented system.


To wrap up my responses, in Australia, we each are assigned a Tax File Number. This number could be used as your input code number combined with your birth date and full name to ensure that each voter has cast their vote only once.

Combine that with security risks as you have mentioned and I don't deny that if a security system can be built.. it can be hacked.. the same goes for any physical institutions.. there are always holes in them and ways to physically "hack" those too, does this mean we should abolish our current system for that reason? I don't think so.

I do however think that it is impossible for a single person to accurately represent the individual thoughts of all of their constituents that voted them into power. This would be the tradeoff.. a little extra risk for a better shot at real democracy or at least a closer form of true democracy where the public has a vote on all things the country does and not just a vote for who they want to make all the decisions for their country and hope that they actually stick to their word.. which Australia for 1 example is finding.. just is NOT happening.

reply to post by JaxCavalera


People don't exactly get this yet but they will.
Politicians are just the middleman anyway. They are the fellows we elect and pay to get things we want done. One group has a liberal agenda and the other group has a conservative agenda but if you ask them what needs to be done they will give you 2 different ways to accomplish nearly the same thing.

What needs to be done seldom changes but the people we elect to accomplish the task does.

Soon we will realize we don't need the middle man anymore and in fact, we cannot afford to pay them. Why take funds away from the actual job we are electing them to do?

We need to jump to what needs doing. Vote on THOSE ISSUES and then elect (the best crew for the job) who does the work to complete them.

Originally posted by JaxCavalera
Why do we need .... politicians that are more often than not found to be lying, promise breaking, over paid puppets?

With modern technology, why not have SMS / E-Mail based votes or an online forum poll system

I agree with the SMS voting idea.

We need them so that we can throw them all into a real-time Big Brother game show.

They can slowly 'eliminate' each other with WMD's that they paid for after taxing us.

Then whoever is left alive in the 'game zone' or doesn't comply with the 'survival' rules.... NUKEM.

Problem Solved.

Why do we need representation by politicians that are more often than not found to be lying, promise breaking, over paid puppets?

Who needs that? Who says anyone needs that? No one needs that! But the system doesn't care about what the people need.

With modern technology, why not have SMS / E-Mail based votes or an online forum poll system where you get a text notifying you that there is a poll taking place on [insert subject matter of legislation being proposed here].
we have it

I actually asked this question - I even proposed a way more secure system than that (SMS and E-mail is certainly not secure whatsoever, let alone secure enough for such purposes), and an 'official' said something like: "There would be corruption in the system" or something. As if there isn't any NOW.. the other answer was that with technology, such a system could be hacked or cheated, etc..

But as Stalin (if I remember correctly) said, voters decide nothing. The vote counters decide everything.

This is of course not accurate nor factually true, but it explains the whole difficulty of 'letting people vote', and the insignifigance of the people's vote. People don't know how many voted for what - only the vote counters do. And besides, there are so many ways for such a system to be completely insignifigant anyway.. and the whole "You can only vote for what we allow you to vote, and choose only from the people that we have selected for you to choose from"-system is of course the final obstacle to letting people decide any damn thing in actual reality.

And of course there are more and more layers to this, and TPTB pull the strings from the shadows.

.. true democracy

Democracy sounds like a sound idea (no pun intended). Ahh, how nice. Let the people decide. The word means 'Power of the People', but what it really boils down to, is power of the majority. Now, you say, isn't that the same thing?

Well, no. As the old joke goes, democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. The founding fathers of America didn't give them democracy. They gave them a republic (not to be confused with republicans or republicanism

legislation

Why do you feel the need for MORE legislation? Aren't thousands upon thousands of all kinds of restricting acts and statutes enough for you?

We already have THE LAW. That is enough. We don't need any legislation. That's for the corporate employees.