Using the Internet To Subvert Democracy 202
david_adams writes "All the recent talk about various polls and elections being pranked or hijacked, serious and silly alike, prompted me to write an article about the technical realities behind online polling, and the political fallout of ever becoming subject to online voting for serious elections. Even if we were to be able to limit voting to legitimate, legal voters, the realities of social networking and the rise of Internet-based movements would dramatically alter the political landscape if online voting were to become commonplace."
Robustness (Score:5, Interesting)
Changing democratic preferences is not a subversion of democracy. Many would argue it would make for a more robust democracy.
Re:Missing option? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ron Paul!
(This is referring to how Ron Paul supporters would in the year leading up to the election, for lack of a better term, "flash mob" any online poll that had Ron Paul as a choice and spam votes for Ron Paul. It didn't really matter what the poll was, it could have been "Who would you like to see devoured by a pack of dingos?", as long as Ron Paul was an option they'd be there spamming for him.)
Re:Polls != Democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just a facet of first-past-the-post democracies.
There are actually democracies where it's virtually impossible to get a majority.
Americans...
Re:Elections and online voting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dumb article. (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now voting stands on 1587 total votes, 44% for the Tanuki and 45% for the Cadabra.
An easier way to make democracy more effective (Score:4, Interesting)
After the election which took place as normal. Every member of parliament gets a vote that is proportionate to the number of constituents that are eligible to vote.
Everyone who is eligible to vote can change who represents them to any of the sitting MPs, once every 3 moths or so. This takes a vote away from their MP and gives it to the MP they want to have it. (Suggest that libraries are used for this purpose).
This process has the following effects.
1. It does not disenfranchise those who don't want to do more than they already do.
2. It maintains an element of local representation.
3. It makes MPs do what they say they will do, because if they don't people will stop supporting them a lot more quickly.
4. It allows for a far greater degree of representation. Out of the several hundred sitting MPs it is likely that at least one will closely represent your views.
Re:Dumb article. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I would say that that has always been the real definition of democracy. The definition of democracy that most people describe is completely different out of necessity, because it's a piece of propaganda that the masses need to believe. The "bewildered herd" needs to be managed, because they're too dumb to know what's good for them. That's been a central theme of elite political theory for a very long time (see, for example, the writings of Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, Reinhold Niebuhr). Even when the US was founded, James Madison was quite clear [yale.edu] about what the purpose of the senate should be: