Zagadka wrote:In a whole, people aren't educated enough to make these kinds of decisions, especially both the large policy acts and with menial day to day operations votes.
Yes, electors are incompetent idiots.
But so are unfortunately the vast majority of our representatives, who are mere school teachers, physicians, entrepreneurs, etc. Yes they are idiots. Yes they are incompetent. Almost totally. Yes they spout stupid things all day long. We can think ourselves fortunate when they're at least competent on one important topic. They're still on the average slightly more competent than the average elector, but not enough to be significant, especially not when you take into account the unavoidable problems with the concentration of power: corruption, networking/oligarchy, different interests than the electors', courtesans and hubris, etc.
A very few of our representatives are genuine elites, highly educated and competent on many of the important topics. But they are often pursuing their own goals and there is no guarantee that they get the last word anyway: usually this one is a matter of influence, not competence.
In my opinion direct democracy + centralized executive power would not be worse than the horrible governance we currently have.
Zagadka wrote:1) Are people going to vote every day? Voter turnout in America is fucking pathetic
They won't, this is why I want to keep representatives: their weight on every vote will be a function of the number of people who did not vote.
2) Even ignoring all reality, technology is not nearly in the realm of having this be possible. We can't even produce an electronic voting system, even one that leaves a paper trail.
Indeed cryptographic algorithms are broken after 10-30 years on average (one exception: RSA), because of new mathematical discoveries (not even because of computing power increases). To have a currency, an electoral system or any other critical system depend on cryptography is stupid.
This is why electronic voting imposes to discard the vote secrecy. Yes this is big deal. But it is acceptable for some purposes, such as a direct democracy.
3) Debate. How would debate happen?
There is no need to hold a centralized debate, people could just go to forums / facebook / etc. I would still hold one though.
However there would be a lot to say about the executive process, amendments, popular initiatives, etc. While the executive process likely has to remain centralized, maybe we can have a greater transparency and openness (a random citizen could submit a project, gain crowd support, and then enjoy the executive machine for a few months to fuel a proper redaction after consulting all stakeholders and taking into account the many technicalities).
jean wrote:The goal is to promote direct democracy in an international level by using the android technology.
A global democracy would be a horrible thing, much frustrating for all of us. Believe me the result would be very far from the liberal values that most westerners hold, we could soon end up with a right to beat adultery women and such. The world is a weird place.