The future of Internet “Representative” Democracy
A good case can be made that U.S. legislators no longer represent their voters and that our two-party system is only one-party because not only do banks own Congress as my senator Dick Durbin so honestly said, but pay to play politics owns Congress on all legislative matters. Voters like me, learned in the 2008 election that a change-President can’t make a dent on the corrupt power that owns Washington. So even when the citizens demand change to greatly reduce the corruption, they have little power to make it happen compared to the vast corrupters’ power.
Districts have been gerrymandered so 85 percent of incumbents feel safe from any real challenge. Even when citizens want to remove money as the primary means of getting elected, incumbents control any real chance for a constitutional convention because of free speech requirements. We have allowed our representatives to disenfranchise us from ourselves. The people, whom our constitution says hold the real power, have given it away. Even though there are a handful of congress critters who have not been corrupted, because the disease is so wide spread, all current ones need to be fired so we can start over.
Hey that is not such a bad idea. We could fire all of them- permanently! Before you dismiss me as a complete impractical crackpot, stay with me as we explore the idea a little further.
What I’m going to lay out in brief, crude and elementary form may seem far out and impossible to accomplish. I don’t think it has to be if we envision the capabilities we have before us. Technically it is feasible. Politically it presents a monumental challenge. If the proposal has enough credibility and creates enough excitement, it could be doable.
I’ve toyed with the idea briefly in my mind from time to time. A Seminal post by ekunin on FDL Representative Democracy Doesn’t Work Anymore, made me give more serious thought to my concept.
Put simply, we don’t need politically elected representatives to vote for us if we all could vote for ourselves. A reversion to town hall government updated through technology. Our representatives would all be fired. We would select from every state Bill-Developer Assistants (BDAs) who would craft and write legislation we request. We could select them in the same way we would vote on legislation- Internet voting. More on their role later.
Now if you already don’t think I’m crazy, you do now because of electronic election fraud that has already happened in Ohio and other states. If a fraud-proof, electronic system can’t be devised, I am crazy. I believe that we have the technology or can develop it, to build one that is fraud-proof. For example, every voter would provide a thumb print or eyeball to prove who they are and that they are a qualified voter. That can be done at home or in public locations. All votes could be videotaped for followup if any fraud is suspected. Or some technology geek can come up with something even more fraud-proof than I can conceive.
Just as we would use the same fraud-proof system to vote on the final bills, we can use it to tell our BDAs how we feel as the proposed bills wend their way into a final product. Lobbyists will have to tell us, not pay us or wine and dine us, their positions through the same websites we use. Any broadcast or print ads or attempts to influence voters on any specific bill would be prohibited. I’m not a legal expert, but if they have the same access to make their opinions known as any citizen, how can they claim we are violating free speech. We couldn’t prevent corporations, labor unions and other groups to use their own sites to make their case. Voters would have the choice of using those sites or not.
Internet ads could be allowed if the user has the choice to watch or ignore. If we legally can’t ban the ads, then we can encourage citizens to ignore them because straight, honest information is available online. Corporations don’t have enough money to buy all of us which they can do so easily and cheaply with our current congress critters and our money election system. Think of how cheap it is for them to craft and own legislation now in comparison to the trillions they make.
Websites for each bill would provide ample information for voters in words devoid of propaganda and emotional appeals. BDAs won’t represent parties or ideologies because they are assistants elected to represent all and all BDAs would receive the same salary except for bill leaders who will receive bonuses when work is complete. Voters would decide the bonus amounts based on the importance and excellence of the bill. The BDAs would have subordinates to help them with their work. We would have BDAs assigned to watch for the devil in the details to prevent surprises.
We would have to develop a way to keep the BDAs from being corrupted so that the lobbyists will have to use facts and logic to convince them of how their proposals will be best for Americans as a country, not just a state or region. We could develop college certification or specialty colleges to train the BDAs. We could give the BDAs similar status of our appeals court and justices of the supreme court in their goal of being free of prejudice and deciding on facts and logic to the greatest extent possible. Laws would have to be enacted to provide penalties for illegal access or attempts to influence as now exists for judges.
If the BDAs are selected by state in proportion to population, the argument will be made that urban will dominate rural which our present House-Senate system is supposed to equalize.
With modern communication, the significant differences are disappearing. Today, crazies can be found in both the country and city in fairly equal numbers. True, there is a greater concentration of crazies in six southern states, but if they can’t own BDAs like they own the congress critters, they will just have to learn to be responsible for educating themselves and not blindly rely on their critters.
There are two areas, and I am sure others I have missed, which I don’t have a good answer for yet. The first is classified information and operations. Even though my proposed new system is based on full transparency, there would be military and intelligence operations that require secrecy to be successfully carried out. My proposal would have to insist on a drastic reduction in using classification and it would have to be used when only absolutely essential and could not be used for political purposes. That’s the way it is supposed to be now and we all know how that is working out. The BDAs would have to be relied on as the critters are now to determine need for funds and secrecy or a citizens panel could be designated for just that purpose. Since the BDAs are not beholden to the states once elected, decisions should be better than our present system. While some aspects of new weapon systems would need to be classified, developing a totally secret system would just not be feasible.
The second is distributing federal money to states through a prioritized system. If the federal government has too much power deciding distribution, the states will be too powerless and would have to resort to even heavier taxation of their residents. Maybe there has to be a percentage distribution based on population and when situations occur where a need is greater in a small population state or even large one, the national voters would have to decide whether or not to assist them.
I realize this is a new paradigm in how our nation would function. It no doubt has many flaws. It should be better than how we operate now. Would appreciate your criticism and ideas if you think it has any merit.
Two things I see I see up front; first, internet access is still by no means universal… many of the “low-information voters” the GOP currently targets , as well as minorities and the poor, don’t have computers.
Second, there is still no viable mechanism whereby citizens can inform themselves, since our media are so corrupt and/or dimwitted.
Personally, I think that the overrepresentation of small states in the Senate is a huge problem; that the “gang of six” represents something like 3% of the population is, frankly, an outrage.
Also, aside from weapons systems and the like, I think that secrecy is anathema to democracy and invites abuse, as we’ve seen time and again. Those are just my intiial thoughts; I’l mull it over a little more.
There is a bill working now and hearings about broadband access so with public locations and perhaps even computer equipment made available to the poor, the access problem can be worked. There are countries like South Korea who have far higher usage of cell phones and the Internet than we do. If they can do it, why can’t we?
When you have a military operation where you can’t keep the enemy from knowing your plans, that would be a problem. Terrorists will also be a problem for quite some time. At some point, we could stop using our military for anything but humanitarian and natural disaster situations and secrecy would not be needed. Our secret operations, particularly the CIA and mercenaries have caused far more problems than they have solved.
Agreed. I think our system of secrecy has created 90% of the “terrorism” we now face, as surely as darkness follows daylight. Unfortunately. it continues.
As for internet universality, it’s kind of like health care universality; other countries do it, which makes it foreign and suspect, not to mention costly, what with all these wars on.
Don’t ever forget base motives.
There’s this from a writer of fiction, who says, wearily, it’s all been said before. And better …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/other-economists-in-the-r_b_277065.html
She makes some excellent points about human frailties and idiots who ignore them. No matter what system we use, those frailties have to be dealt with. Taking money as much as possible out of the equation with its survival of the fittest concept, would bring about more sanity.
Great article, Dirigo; I’d never thought of Smiley as an intellectual nor philosopher, but there it is. She missed her calling when she went on the TV.
Nuts and fruitcakes …
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/04/blogs/coopscorner/entry5289202.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.7
Same message the Hag has eloquently delivered in several ways to us. I never thought our politics could get this nutjobbery. BTW, do you know what fugly means? She said, “political polarization has passed the point of no return but it’s getting fugly out there.” I like it but am not sure what it means.
She? You’re referring to Smiley?
Well, she’s a writer of fiction! She makes things up (kinda like I’m tending to do more and more).
Great piece, Dirigo, and so true. My father and his brother were the same, unfortunately, Dad was the righty.
Referring to the Cooper piece, I am saddened and frightened about, shall we say, the operatic nature (I’m being kind) of the outbursts over health care, and other things – like the truly weird reaction to the president trying to encourage kids to study. What he’s doing other presidents have done; there is no precedent to be terrified about.
RMP talks about a paradigm (the old “paradigm shift”).
I think we’re talking about trying to move forward, as he suggests, in the midst of a screaming, hurricane-level flood tide of fear and ignorance not seen in our lifetimes. And clearly, there is a brutal exploitation of the fears and ignorance of millions who can’t say anything intelligent about the kind of consensus referred to by Cooper (and which I grew up in), any more than they can say which pairs of socks they wore last week.
I like RMP’s proposal; but it assumes a mass level of intelligence, sufficient to support a true and direct democratic polity, that I don’t think is there.
The great irony may be that the country as a whole is far dumber and more frightened than 50 years ago, in part because of the technology and media (the effect of atomizing the audience), but also because of the typically American tendency (easily exploited at any time) to have almost no historical memory, except on the level of flag-waving, slogans, treacly arguments about exceptionalism, and fear of the other (racism).
This phenomenon may be restricted to certain regions, or a certain region; but I’m not so sure.
K Street would still exist of course, and they’d figure out how to sway our votes, but they’d have to take ALL OF US on golfing trips to Scotland.
I don’t golf but I’m sure we can work something out.
sysprog, I’d be honored to go in your stead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qPrR49qsDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE12k6XIKnM
(off topic)
A LIGHTHOUSE IN THE DESERT TO GUIDE YOUR CAMEL AT NIGHT
The deep thoughts of a Palin supporter:
http://twitter.com/aprilliesel/status/3728569035
Click the link in the twitter message.
(I’m using an indirect link to the blog post because the blogger is paranoid about clicks coming in to her blog from other blogs).
That was the most cuckoo thing I’ve read in, well, a few days (since Glenn Beck’s “analysis” of the artworks at Rockefeller Center…). Thanks, sysprog, for the comic relief.
“Put simply, we don’t need politically elected representatives to vote for us if we all could vote for ourselves.”
How will the minority be protected from the tyranny of the majority? See Prop 8.
That’s an interesting question, Karrsic. Living as I do in an initiative state, I’m well acquainted with the abuse of the system by well-financed charlatans, resulting in “democracy” being turned on its head for nefarious reasons. I think that the repeal of a few Supreme Court decisions, notably Buckley vs, Valeo, which transmogrified money into speech, and a previous one, Santa Clara County VS. Southern Pacific Railroad (I think) that established the nutty concept of corporate personhood, would solve the problem overnight. Get rid of those, and no drastic reform would be needed. And a pig just flew by my 13th floor balcony.
If you’re nice to me I’ll share some of my banana with you, and then we can focus on issues instead of personalities and stuff …
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14361802
The Economist is suspicious of empathy, even among the Bonobo. Now, who would have suspected that unhappy possibility?
Could it be because credible evidence of empathy in other species might make it harder to eat them, or make the oligarchs of our own species seem less essential to the commonwealth? Or — God forbid — make The Economist seem less oracular? Now that, children, would surely be the end of the world-as-we-know-it.
That was hilarious, Dirigo. I used to buy the Economist to take on planes, which worked out well enough with a barf bag right there, but I no longer do so, because writers like that can spoil the whole trip.
Two more examples of the pathetic level our political rhetoric has sunk:
Right-wing mom so upset about Obama’s pro-education speech, she cries on CNN
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/09/right-wing-mom-cries-on-cnn/
GOP Congressman fears Democratic totalitarian state
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/04/gop-congressman-fears-democratic-totalitarian-state/
The cuckoo never stops….
More ways that the Internet has changed our lives. One of the kills is Sarah Palin’s VP candidacy.
50 things that are being killed by the internet: The internet has wrought huge changes on our lives – both positive and negative – in the fifteen years since its use became widespread.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6133903/50-things-that-are-being-killed-by-the-internet.html