Sixteen-year-olds can learn to drive, get a job, pay taxes and be on the Organ Donor Register, but they are considered too young to vote. Should they also have a stake in deciding their future?
“But but you’ll get tyranny of the majority, which clearly doesn’t happen when the majority elect a tyrannical representative”
Are the lobbyists going to bribe us all to vote for their corporate interests over our own? You can buy out a “mate” you can’t buy out 26 million individuals.
What we will get is not having to pick a pollie who only aligns with 2 out of 2000 of our views. We won’t have politicians afraid to take action because they fear losing voters.
I have to say, the more I think about it, the more I genuinely think Thor Prohaska—a recurring independent candidate for Dickson (Peter Dutton’s seat) and Kurwongbah (the state seat around the same area)—might have the right idea. He has an extremely detailed explanation for how it would work, but the short of his plan is that your MP would vote on any particular issue precisely how a majority of residents vote on the issue. But local residents could nominate some other local resident to be their proxy either overall, or for specific issues, alleviating the need for every voter to keep up-to-date and educated on every single issue, if there’s someone else they trust who can do that for them—while still being able to pull away that trust at literally any moment, or to simply vote directly for an issue that they are particularly passionate about, or if there’s one issue where they disagree with their chosen proxy.
That’s how you get an America-like situation where the goal isn’t to come up with policies the most people agree with, but to find ways to get the people who already agree with you to turn out to vote, and to dissuade people who disagree with you from voting.
It’s a brilliant way to empower NIMBYs even more than they already are.
Okay so make it mandatory with a “no opinion” option for those who are not concerned on issues.
We don’t actually need to have an individual opinion on every topic, nor would everyone care about everything. Let’s empower people to make their own choices for once.
There are an average of two divisions every single day Parliament sits. And that’s without counting votes that are determined on the voices. Or issues at the state and local council levels. Federally, there are about 200 Bills introduced every single year. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with enabling people to vote on all of them if they want to, but making it mandatory is a ludicrous proposition. Enabling people to choose a proxy is not just a good idea, it’s a necessity to do large-scale direct democracy.
Direct democracy is the only real democracy.
“But but you’ll get tyranny of the majority, which clearly doesn’t happen when the majority elect a tyrannical representative”
Are the lobbyists going to bribe us all to vote for their corporate interests over our own? You can buy out a “mate” you can’t buy out 26 million individuals.
What we will get is not having to pick a pollie who only aligns with 2 out of 2000 of our views. We won’t have politicians afraid to take action because they fear losing voters.
I have to say, the more I think about it, the more I genuinely think Thor Prohaska—a recurring independent candidate for Dickson (Peter Dutton’s seat) and Kurwongbah (the state seat around the same area)—might have the right idea. He has an extremely detailed explanation for how it would work, but the short of his plan is that your MP would vote on any particular issue precisely how a majority of residents vote on the issue. But local residents could nominate some other local resident to be their proxy either overall, or for specific issues, alleviating the need for every voter to keep up-to-date and educated on every single issue, if there’s someone else they trust who can do that for them—while still being able to pull away that trust at literally any moment, or to simply vote directly for an issue that they are particularly passionate about, or if there’s one issue where they disagree with their chosen proxy.
Or we could cut out the middle man and just vote or not vote ourselves on issues as we see fit?
That’s how you get an America-like situation where the goal isn’t to come up with policies the most people agree with, but to find ways to get the people who already agree with you to turn out to vote, and to dissuade people who disagree with you from voting.
It’s a brilliant way to empower NIMBYs even more than they already are.
Okay so make it mandatory with a “no opinion” option for those who are not concerned on issues.
We don’t actually need to have an individual opinion on every topic, nor would everyone care about everything. Let’s empower people to make their own choices for once.
There are an average of two divisions every single day Parliament sits. And that’s without counting votes that are determined on the voices. Or issues at the state and local council levels. Federally, there are about 200 Bills introduced every single year. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with enabling people to vote on all of them if they want to, but making it mandatory is a ludicrous proposition. Enabling people to choose a proxy is not just a good idea, it’s a necessity to do large-scale direct democracy.