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01189: RE: [WDDM] Re: Regarding rule by representatives

From: "Nicolas Durand" <nicolas(at)enitiatives.ch>
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 14:40:30 +0200
Subject: RE: [WDDM] Re: Regarding rule by representatives

I did not see the vote delegation as "just another way of representative
democracy".

I saw it more on a very fine-grained level: for example, 10 years ago, I
would for instance give my vote to my father (now I'm of course voting
myself), because I did not have/want to take the time to get informed and
vote. But still: on average, I know that he represents me better than the
rest of the Swiss people! And if my brothers and sisters and his good
friends do it, the final vote still represents better the will of the
population than a vote where just the most motivated ones go.

But this system only works in an electronically voting world. It would
indeed be quite complex to implement in the real world.

Nico

-----Original Message-----
From: M. Kolar [wddm(at)mkolar.org]
Sent: vendredi, 1. juin 2007 13:52
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Re: Regarding rule by representatives

echarp:
I think that we have been discussing this matter before. I have never
been a big fan of the delegation of votes to various representatives
(even issue based) such as practised in your system or in former Vivarto
(now the World Parliament Experiment, tgde.org).
After giving it some more thought, I am now completely against this
practise.
I think that its main effect (goal) is just to give the impression of
larger turnout, to cave to the present day requirement for various
unreasonably high participation threshold requirements in some
referenda. But the danger is that is may be misused. Some people may get
trust of a number of other people to delegate votes to them on all or
some issues. Then they could vote however they wish, completely opposite
to the impression they made when vying for the delegated votes. The
possibility of delegation would attract the same type of people that are
our current "representatives." I expect that only those voters who are
"lazy" to educate themselves about various issues would delegate their
votes if representative-type person gets hold of them and persuades
them that he-she will represents them well. Such voters will then quite
probably forget soon about the whole thing, and will not be checking on
their delegated representatives how they are actually voting on behalf
of them, so they can to stop the delegation.
And even if they would follow all the time the voting of their chosen
representatives, how what savings will it bring to them? To be able to
check on them, they would have to educate themselves on a given issue
anyway. If they do that, why would they then bother to delegate their
votes if they were qualified to vote themselves? It does not make any
sense to me. Only great potential to use gullible people.
It is more honest to simply have No Opinion on a given matter and do
not vote at all, and let other people who have an opinion decide this
matter, but each of them having only one vote for themselves, not
blind-faith delegation of votes. Thus we must not have any participation
threshold. Even if (on a national level) only a thousand informed people
will vote on a minor issue, it is still more than a usual number of
deputies in a parliament, who are no experts in a given matter.
So I am completely against the vote delegation.. Better no to
complicate the voting or deliberation systems with delegation of votes.
Instead better provide everybody interested with enough resources to
educate themselves on the given issue.

Mirek



echarp wrote:

Why not let the participants decide for themselves what level of
representation they want?

Why not make it an individual choice on each issue?

Let's say I trust person X on issue Y, and I don't have much time to
follow this issue on a day to day basis. I could just rely on him.

But, if ever comes up something on issue Y, on which I disagree with X,
then I should be able to:
* change my representative
* override my representative on that particular thing

This should combine the best of both worlds, with less possibilities for
betrayals and waste of energy.

What do you think?

echarp - http://leparlement.org

On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 10:49:04AM +0200, Filia den Hollander wrote:


There is indeed a greyzone in which two 'paradigms' overlap. There's a
s y s t e m (political) and we can make it as tight as we can, but
there will always be a 'level' in which we have to rely on (read:
trust) people.



...



We usually think in terms of 'control' and 'limit the betrayal', but
there's also the g i f t of people willing to spend extratime and
energy. The one aspect which is usually left out, is that we are
responsible together for healthy conditions in which we all can 'blossom'.



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