Australians Running On-Line Poll Based Senators 293
exeme writes "The 2007 Australian election was recently announced and a new completely on-line based political party is running for election to the Australian Senate. Senator On-Line will give Australian residents eligible to vote a chance to vote in on-line polls for every piece of legislation that comes to the Senate. The senator will then blindly vote in accordance with the majority.
The party has no position on anything until it is voted on and has been approved by the Australian Electoral Commission as a legitimate party. The party will be running two candidates in each Australian state." I imagine this could have a huge impact on CowboyNeal related legislation down under.
Democracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
By sucking around for unwise votes in response to well-groomed populist or alarmist nonsense. If all it takes is a mouseclick to "agree" with a position that's been slickly presented to you in a nice Flash-based web site that you just visited while reading your e-mail at home and having your fourth beer, then this makes matters worse, not better. If you can get a Nobel Peace Price for slickly packaging semi-truthy rhetoric, you can certainly get your pet legislation passed that way too - and even more quickly using this new bots-using-Senatorial-bots method. You want less corruption? Elect people with integrity and good judgement. Is that just too much work, compared to complaining? Then quit complaining.
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would. I really would. I'm serious, I would.
If I just could.
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Just because everyone does it doesn't make it right. The reverse conclusion is equally valid, btw.
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I agree with you. People often forget, that the Democracy — in its original, direct-governing fashion — is what condemned Socrates to death.
However, it is possible, that the described system can be perfected. For example, to cut out the "on-the-whim" decisions influenced by inebriation, etc., a voter may be required to reaffirm their decision again — a few days later.
In the famous game of Civilization (at least, in the "Call To Power" version of it), there is a government called "Virtu
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a) we'd
Re:Democracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not democracy's fault (Score:3, Interesting)
People often forget, that the Democracy -- in its original, direct-governing fashion -- is what condemned Socrates to death.
It's a mistake to blame direct governance for that, though. The same thing could happen in a republic, if it had the support of the representatives (which is much easier to get than the support of the population, since there are only a few representatives).
The solution isn't to condemn direct democracy. It's to have a written constitution that makes certain issues off-limits, like the Bill of Rights, and make it more difficult to amend the constitution than to pass an average law. You can still put the vot
Re:Democracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the point — it will not be different from today. But today's politicians don't promise to obey the electorate's wishes literally, they all use their own judgement (for better or worse) — nothing to enforce here.
These new guys in Australia, however, promise to hold no position of their own and to vote purely as the electorate wants them to.
There is no way to legally hold them to that specific promise. For example, their voters will not be able to access their web-servers' logs in real-time... There may also be a situation of "Yes, our voters wanted A, but B was obviously superiour, so we voted for B anyway."
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The problem with this type of electronic
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As you allude to indirectly, most people simply don't have time to make fully informed decisions on most issues. If a direct democracy system did become widespread, I would expect to see a "free market" of organizations that would issue a series of "vote re
Re:Democracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I read a good article [torontosun.com] on this just today; a major point of the article is that any country that is drowning in media cannot get the best people to run for office because the best people all have skeletons in their closets.
Digital Divide (Score:3, Insightful)
2 cents,
QueenB.
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Harder than showing up at a precinct and voting?
Exactly, no it isn't.
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I highly doubt that whatever security they impose to restrict each individual person to one vote each will prove more effective than the efforts of politicians and lobbyists who see the opportunity to buy a vote at the cost of nothing more than a bunch of computers(reusable).
Missing Option (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Missing Option (Score:5, Insightful)
A good elected official will take a piece of legislation that has good parts and bad parts, strip out the bad parts, and add more good parts to it. If all you can do is simply vote yes or no, you're losing quite a bit of power there. Would they allow you to vote on a particular bill and say "yes if you strike out this one provision" or "yes as long as we add x, y, or z." What about creating legislation from scratch? If you rely on the other senators to do so, you are really at their mercy in terms of what legislation the "voting mass" ever gets to vote on.
Interesting approach (Score:5, Interesting)
But in all - this seems to be the next step in democracy.
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http://senatoronline.com.au/faq [senatoronline.com.au]
2. Who can vote on each Bill or Issue?
Every person recorded on the Australian Electoral roll is entitled to join SOL, without any membership fees, as a 'poll member'.
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Another thought that occurs to me: Will there be any attempt at discussion or education regarding bills in relation to this website? I took a quick look but failed to see anything like that. They encourage the masses to give their opinion, but do they arm them with any information on the issue at hand? Even an aggregation of other news sites and a slashdot style forum would be sufficient, IMHO.
I could see this party being a worthwhile one in the se
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This is not new and definitely not a new step in democr
Re:Interesting approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, a representative democracy has its advantages. If, and only if, the person who is supposed to represent you does actually represent you. If he's just a slick bastard who gets the lowbrows to vote for him because he promises easy solutions to problems that have none, he's worse than any direct democracy could be.
Now, show me one politician who isn't such a slick bastard (one that actually has some power, not some wannabe, trying to get somewhere), and we'll talk.
A unique concept (Score:5, Interesting)
Australia:
Rest of capitalist, democratic world:
Perhaps a bit of a cynical view?
Re:A unique concept (Score:4, Insightful)
Wisdom of the Mob? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some non-political example is slashdot versus digg. Moderation is required.
Re:Wisdom of the Mob? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually that's a pretty good example; it even covers the fact that slashdot, while better than digg, is itself pretty far from perfect.
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In case you haven't noticed, the editorial influence of slashdot isn't exactly something to brag about. Digg fails because the only people who select stories are those whose time is the last valuable. If there were an incentive system to make it worth ones while, you'd find a higher quality of moderators.
America fails because the only people with direct access
Indeed? (Score:2)
I posted this somewhere else as well but your argument is so flawed I feel I must repeat myself.
Commericial radio in holland got its frequencies through a public auction that gave them a license of a set number of years. When that license ran out the goverment wanted to hold another OPEN PUBLIC auction. Commercial radio was bigger then everyone thought and the goverment was sure that they could raise a lot of money through this because more bidders would now want take part.
They were right, and the current
Good luck (Score:3, Funny)
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27 Hands Raise
Chair: All those against.
72 Hands Raise
Chair: All those Cowboy Neal.
1 Hand Raised
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Hmm... Does Slashdotting an entire government constitute an act of war, I wonder? :-/
What a terrible idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
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But people who can't or shouldn't personally access or assess the information that a Senator is supposed to analyze FOR her constituents will have to make poor judgements, by definition. A Senator may make poor decisions (and can lose their job for doing so), but a robot Senator must make decisions badly, because the people pushing his buttons aren't in a position to make good decisions. On some broad things - like, should the country raise such-and-such a tax on i
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Most Senators, at least in the US, don't read the very bills they are voting on. They know the information on there based on conversations around the proverbial water cooler with other politicians. However accurate those conversations are with the reality of the bill is another issue. Having a couple of thousand voters looking over a bill directly would be very handy. Now, the question
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Another interesting question: would the results of votes be different if all laws had to be short enough and clearly enough written for people to understand, with the voters deciding to vote "no" on principle if asked to accept dozens of pages of legal weaselry?
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But apparently you need something if you think that Iran's stoking of that conflict is somehow going to turn into them happily embracing a democratic, peaceful, non-mysoginistic, non-retrograde neighbor. Leaving, abruptly, would be insanity.
Depends on definition of majority (Score:2)
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What's Next? (Score:4, Funny)
I suppose the next iteration will be text messaging the way you want your senator to vote.
Text "Aye" to 73628 to vote YES.
Text "Nay" to 73628 to vote NO.
(Standard messaging charges apply.)
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Superdemocracy is a terrible idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
The United States Beta that was started in the late 1700's had a great idea: let there be a pseudo-democracy at the Federal level, but limit is greatly. Don't let there be an easy way for the majority to steal from the minority. It worked for a while, until the People slowly upset the restrictions provided for in the Constitution. It was a sad day when Lincoln was elected, the first tyrant of many.
The idea of voting en masse online sounds like a good idea. I recall that MajorBBS founder, the late Tim Stryker (a man I knew personally) was a big proponent of a Superdemocracy. Back then I agreed with him, until I started to realize that the failings of a nation/society generally happen because the People want more without giving more.
My own political thought is what I call a Unanimocracy: a law doesn't get passed without unanimous consent. If you can't get it at the National level, try at the State level. Keep going down the ladder of size until you might end up with a law passed only in a home, or even only by an individual who restricts themselves. Sure, it's a grandious idea, but I feel it is the only fair way to set legislation. The Internet is a great Unanimocracy, with individuals deciding what limitations they'll accept, and others forming relationships based on agreeing to those limitation. You could say that the dreaded click-contracts are similar, although they're covered by "laws" rather that voluntary contracts that can be broken by either party.
The only way I'd accept a Democracy of any kind is if there was an agreement that 10% of any voting bloc can veto any legislation they disagree with. Let 50.1% say "We want to tax tall black men to pay for education of short asian women." Let the legislation be unless 10% of the population votes VETO. That's three ways to vote: Yes, I want it. No, but I don't really care. Veto, this is bad. A 10% veto requirement would get me to support government again, because the minority has power to stop a crazy, and theft-prone, majority.
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It's a neat idea, but in practice it couldn't be done. You'd have no one of knowing from location to location what set of laws are in effect. What if say a neighborhood passes a law that makes it illegal to wear blue on Tuesdays, and you go to visit your friend on Tuesday wearing blue and get chucked in jail for it. Also, I would expect you'd want the state or city police to enforce these local laws, or will everyone have to provide their own police for at every level? Assuming that you'll use the city or s
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First of all, there is absolutely no reason for you to care what a given person's laws are. Maybe your neighbor believes that killing women over the age of 50 is legal. If you're a woman (or a man) over 50 (or under 50), the law has no purpose for you unless you actively try to enter their property. T
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Sorry, it's been a busy morning. I'll try to review your questions again.
As for someone doctoring the rule base, the mutual-feedback system provides for this, except in the case of murd
Re:Superdemocracy is a terrible idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
You do understand that absolutely nothing would ever get done, right? I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but if you want your government to ever do anything, your ideas won't really work. No matter how great an idea is, you'd probably find 10% who would be willing to vote "veto".
Of course, the traditional American theory of government is that deadlock is good, government "getting things done" was bad. (Don't believe me? Read the Federalist Papers.) Now that we have a two-party system, that idea has been subverted. You need a 50% vote to get something done, and usually one single political party controls at least 50%. The original Federalist idea was that there would be many different factions, so that reaching 50% would require getting people from different factions to agree. To that end, I think it might be worth considering that we could raise the percentage needed to pass legislation to something like 60%, making it difficult for a single party to force legislation through. But a 10% veto would happen all the time.
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The 10% number sounds kind of arbitrary to me but there's a more general way to achieve something similar to what you're proposing.
Require that the law treat everyone equally unless each of the unequal parties separately approve of the law. In your example, tall black men would only have to pay for the education of short Asian women if the majority of tall
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Oh dear, this is severely flawed in so many ways. First, if people could actually agree with each other unanimously at a national or even world-wide level, heck, we would be living in a com
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Democracy doesn't work. We've had them for thousands of years, and they always fail as the majority learns they can just vote to steal from the minority
Whereas with the current system the minority steal from the majority on a massive scale. I can't think of a better example of this than the current theft of billions from the US public by corporations via Iraq. The truth is that the rich minority have not been paying their fair share of the tax burden for some time. Increasingly the taxes have been forced onto the public and away from the corporations.
The problem with democracies (or at least the way we run them) is that the rich basically end up in
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An example would be the US right to bear arms. With a literal reading, it clearly states we can possess any weapon we want. That, in most people's opinion, is preposterous as it allows anyone to own a missile or atomic weapon. We, of course, long ago made these things illegal. BUT, tha
Not sure if this is good or bad except in minority (Score:2)
Also, it seems like the process can be controlled or at least subverted by the major parties simply by the leaders
Direct Democracy = Tyranny of the Majority (Score:4, Insightful)
A direct-democracy candidate is by definition only and always the representative of the majority, leaving the minority unrepresented. Direct democracy is, both in theory and practice, government by the majority and only the majority. It is therefore arguably the worst possible form of government, as all other forms of tyranny involve a tyranny of a minority, which inherently gives the majority the potential power to forcibly overthrow the tyrants. One cannot overthrow a tyranny of the majority.
Information Overload (Score:4, Insightful)
Voter turnout for everyday things is gonna suck.
Senators do more than just vote, too. They talk about bills, argue them, control things in committees, and introduce bills themselves. How are you going to do that if you are supposed to be a puppet of the people without any ideas of your own?
I wouldn't vote this party in.
moddup (Score:2)
Too gamable (Score:2)
However, i
Thats it ! (Score:2)
The good ol' Soviet times will come again (Score:2)
SOL? (Score:2)
Umm, correct me if I'm mistaken, but...
Isn't SOL a common acronym for (depending upon your cultural variant), "Shit Out of Luck," "Sadly Out of Luck," "Soldier Out of Luck," or "Solely Out of Luck."True democracy but can it work? (Score:2)
In a true democracy you don't vote for people, you vote for ideas. In an ideal world, every decision would be done by consulting the people. Sounds nice.
Except can it work? How would anything be done unless it is popular? How do you do anything that the major opinion makers do not want to?
In holland we had a bit of trouble with commercial radio, years ago frequencies were auctioned off, then when the contract ran out the goverment wanted to auction it off again, this lead to complaints from the previous w
Sweet! (Score:3, Funny)
May the bast hacker win!
Thats what we pay the senators to do (Score:2)
many important and unimportant issues.
Some mentioned security concerns but this is not the point, practically all
sensitive issues are resolved in the executive branch and not the legislative.
However, anyone voting for such a party is in fact committing himself to take care
in the many votes to follow. Should he not take interest we are again letting small interest
groups who happen to care about some minor piece of legislation pass silly self
Easy salary... (Score:2)
The cardinal flaw: Lack of total information (Score:2)
First of all, too many people don't even want that. They don't want their own opinion. They enjoy being told what to think. They get their opinion from TV or maybe even newspapers. Though the latter is hard to verify, since you'd have to be able to read.
Then, nobody knows everything. Let's
New Political Party! What's in a name?!! (Score:2)
Senator On-Line [CC] will give Australian residents eligible to vote a chance to vote in on-line polls for every piece of legislation that comes to the Senate. The senator will then blindly vote in accordance with the majority. The party has no position on anything until it is voted on and has been approved by the Australian Electoral Commission as a legitimate party.
So, this would be the Senator On-Line party? Where have I heard SOL [acronymfinder.com] before? ;^)
Not off to the most auspicious start, are they?
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Chris Mattern
done before (Score:2)
Representative democracies are valuable because they are a good way to avoid the tyranny of the majority whilst still allowing people to express a preference every (4/5-ish) years if the representatives express poor
Today's Tom Sawyer? (Score:4, Interesting)
a) Homogenization of the vote? Any other senator would be wise, in the absence of strong constituency lobbying, to simply vote with the Senator Online. How could you go wrong if the Online vote is a reflection of the public desire?
b) What is the likely demographic of those who would use Senator Online? The hard working middle-class type isn't likely to want the added burden of being a defacto senator added to the existing job, parenting, soccer mom'ing, etc. Maybe the Senator Online would reflect the will of those with time to spare eg. retirees, welfare abusers, other politcal candidates with an agenda to push, Slashdotters wanting to comment on something different?
c) What platform would a Senator Online candidate use? Great to be a candidate if all you do is vote as told. Who could find fault with your performance? A job for life if you could get it. But what's your election platform? "Vote for me. I'll do exactly what you want
Doesn't this almost seem like Tom Sawyer? Get someone else to do the work (assume researchers/collaters are hired), get someone else to take responsibility (the online voters) but you take the perks (and pay). Does this seem like a scam to anyone else?
Obligatory (Score:2)
wtf mate? (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a better title:
New Australian Party Backs Internet Opinion-poll Driven Candidates
Now, internet aside, how is that any different from business as usual?
A couple of quotes for y'all ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Autocracy is based upon the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?
Lazarus Long
Australian Senate != US Senate (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the time it works pretty well(though the current government is sort of suffering quite a bit because in the last election they took the senate too and there's no one there to buffer their own stupidity), but it's not composed of the same sorts of people as the US Senate and an on-line senator would fit in pretty well there.
Add the fact that most politicians tend to just vote the way of the polls anyway.
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Re:Nice one... (Score:5, Informative)
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Your Senate never writes any new laws? That's fantastic! If only our Senate worked that way. Also our House of Representatives.
We'd still let them vote to repeal old laws, though. And if they're good, then once the US Code fits into a single bound volume again we might let them vote to replace old laws with new ones.
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Agreed. This kind of thing scares me, especially if I've been listening to radio phone-in shows. The idea of democracy is that we elect the kind of government that we want, who roughly agree with our principles and ideals. Democracy is not about the 'people' making every single decision. The only people that will vote in each case here are people who are either (a) bored and unemployed (b) fanatic about a particular issue (c) generally believe they are right about everything. These are not the people
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As far as the parliamentary system, I doubt every seat will be represented in this fashion, just some, or maybe none.
I think its a gre
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Re:Nice one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Our democracies (I'm from the UK) aren't perfect, but its better than handing the lunatics the keys to the asylum.
Actually, I honestly don't think it is at the moment.
Today, we have a Prime Minister, complete with new Cabinet, who has never been voted into that office by the electorate, and indeed who just backed down from holding an election to get a mandate. (Anyone who is about to bleat about a party political system where the Labour Party was elected would do well to remember that they were elected after Blair said he would serve a full third term. There is no rational way you can argue that the Brown administration has a mandate based on party politics. And even if they had been elected without that promise, our first-past-the-post system is so broken that you could hardly call it representative.)
Many of the less popular acts of government in our country are now coming down from above. At national level, we have the unelected European Commission running the show, despite the presence of the directly elected European Parliament, and imposing legislation on national governments. I find it sadly ironic that the government is desperately trying to wriggle out of a referendum on the big European treaty on the basis that it has certain key safeguards for national sovereignty in place, when those "safeguards" basically mean they can ignore the few bits of European law that actually serve the interests of the people: human rights, protection for workers, etc. Meanwhile, the government imposes all sorts of unpopular nonsense on the basis that Europe told it that it had to. Remember that our own European Commissioner is serial ministerial resigner and locally politically uncredible screw-up Peter Mandelson — so when they say "Europe told us to", this is the sort of person they're taking orders from!
This happens at more local levels, too. I live in Cambridge, where right now our County Council are pretty obviously setting up a hugely unpopular congestion charge in the city. This is being done despite widespread opposition among city residents and their elected City Council, who aren't even being shown the models from the consultants. It's also being done by much the same crowd who are already screwing up local transport because of a pet scheme of theirs, which can't possibly be enough to solve the problems they claim we're going to have a few years down the line even according to their own laughably physics-defying models, yet which is being implemented right now at vast cost in both taxpayers' money and disruption to local residents and businesses, even after thousands of local residents opposed the scheme and basically no-one without a vested interest supported it.
In other words, right now the basic decisions that are going to affect me as an everyday guy, at local, national and international levels, are all being made by people I have had no chance to vote for or against. And a great many of the big decisions they are making are in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, which would probably be enough not just to get rid of the legislation but to outright finish political careers in some cases if any remotely democratic form of voting were in place.
I do not believe in a 100% "one adult, one vote" type of system for every little decision, for the simple, pragmatic reason that no-one has enough time to consider all the issues deeply enough to make a sensible, informed choice. I believe in a representative government elected according to the basic principles of the people, where those in the civil service can do the detailed investigation where appropriate and decisions are made by the elected representatives on the basis of the information and any expert advice available to them. I also believe in checks and balances, and in particular that if interest in a particular issue is sufficiently widespread, it should be possible for the people to override the government on that specific issue immediately, rather than waiting for anothe
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Mmm, the darkies would like that (Score:2)
They were first, everyone else came later and NEVER got permission. Only problem, I am not sure the rest of the world wants to take back the australians, or the americans for that matter, there is reason we got you off to the colonies.
It always amazes me that illegal immigrants dare to complain about illegal immigrants just because they been scewing the people who always been there for longer.
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There's a good reason why civilised countries don't dance to the tune of the lowest common denominator.
Gee, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Oh, yes:
Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number...
-Benito Mussolini (emphasis mine)
Despite what you (and Mussolini) think, I think that most common people are quite capable of making decisions that affect their lives.
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Before you debate about this, clear up your vocabulary. Democracy is everyone votes on everything. A Republic is where everyone votes to put Senators, Republicans etc, in power and then they vote on the issues. The United States, is NOT a democracy, Austrailia, is NOT a democracy, etc..etc... If you question my vocabluary, look it up. Most people don't get the difference between a Democracy and Republic and think voting in officals who make the law is a Demo
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The notion that the civil rights of any minority are subject to revocation at the whim of 50%+1 of the vote is scary.
I don't expect good things from this move. Actually, I don't expect these loons to get elected, either.
And how DO you determine that they're following their rules? After all, it's not hard for them to cook the books on a poll, if they have some predetermined outcome in mind.
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A Democracy can be direct, as you describe, or representative, as the US and every one of significant size is.
A Republic is a nation whose head of state is not a monarch; a useful distinction a few hundred years ago, not so much today.
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If these things were really supported by the majority of the population in Australia then one would expect Australians to elect senators who held these positions. That is, there is no general reason to think that indirect democracy is less susceptible to tyranny of the majority than direct democracy.
In theory, the rights of minorities are guaranteed by the con
As opposed to... (Score:4, Interesting)
more to your point. [imdb.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Communism presumes that all the members of the commune can effectively coordinate their actions toward a common set of goals. This matches what you said if and only if "good" is defined as the will of the majority of the group. This, BTW, is why communism doesn't scale: a small group may share common goals (i.e. concept of "good"), but the larger the group becomes the less likely it is that they will all agree
Uhm...what? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Our mileage here may vary, too, as the Republican party seems to be opposed to judicial review ("activist judges"), and is appointing accordingly when they have the chance. With jury nullification out off favor, that leaves nothing to enforce the constitution.