Introducing Continuous election systems

First of all, lets narrow what kind of people may be interested in further reading this; those that really wonder if there are alternative ways to improve the democracy content and walk around the very well known "hogs" and "bugs" that current democracies implementations suffer. If you don't consider yourself fit into this description and you dont really care about improving stuff, dont waste your precious time with this and go watch you CBS and FOX. Shoo

Random introductory toughts:

A Fair amount of fairly intelligent people (all over the world) have thought along the last 2 centuries about the optimal way for market and democracy to get along harmoniously, and how to minimize the contradictions that arise between both. In the name of that desire however, have ocurred sad implementations that solved the problem eliminating them both (we are still talking of market and democracy)

Other approaches to the problem deal with restraining some of market freedoms to ensure a partial balance between them. However market restrictions are not perfect, and they usually reflect the point of view of one of the hegemonical parties that usually keep power, more due to the lobbyist fractions that feedback to campaign money thru the media, and into the shaping and management of public opinion.

Thats how democracies work, or at least how we understand it. However this system assures that the desire and perception of change that may dwell distributed, unorganized and in latent state in the society, usually have to evolve, organize, overcome many "political correctness" and "realpölitik" filters, and finally, only if they find a feedback point in the economy (thru some campaign financing) they may have a chance to place themselves into the forces that struggle into the congress for approving bills that become law.

The root of the problem lies in the simple, plain fact that the system doesnt favour that politicians/senators/congressmans/etc think themselves as "employees of the citizens", but as "employees of the lobbists". The closed circuit lobbyists -> campaign -> media -> elections feedbacks a lot faster than the closed circuit citizens -> approval -> elections. But democracy in abstract is the second loop, otherwise is not called democracy but something else (corporatism).

Employees usually have the tangible, motivational fact that their employers have enough power to fire them if they feel their job is not fully satisfactory. That can't be put simpler

To have our politicians to think themselves more as "employees of citizens", they have to have the factual, real, tangible feeling that their jobs (hence their material priviledges) lie in the same hands that gave them their jobs, ie: those who elected them.

In fact we can say that thats exactly what happens now; the reelection happens only when a politician "did it right", and doesnt when "did it wrong". But the feedback loop takes a number of years. No puppy learns a lesson executed ten days after the stain. Ergo, doesnt help to the optimal mindset on politicians.

Lets suppose a election system that removes the notion of fixed-term massive elections, and move into the concept of a dynamical election, where people updates the state of its political preferences any time of the year. So the political support of a senator, a party, freely fluctuates over the year. Allowing it to be dynamical means that political support is not anymore a "blind snapshot" but the ability to auto-organize around alternate options, opening an interesting hole in the bipartidism hegemonical containment security structures.

The stability of a elegible charge now relies precisely on those electors that are in this moment electorally supporting him. If those electors remove him that support, moving its support for that eligible charge to another candidate, and that other candidate reaches a new simple majority, he becomes the new elected representative for that charge.

Politicians will know their job lie in their electors, so they will know to whom they must answer.


Cheers

Beacuse sometimes the right course of actions is not popular. We elect leaders to be leaders, not mob-rulers.
I like the way it is now. Perhaps we should put some kind of term-limit if we want to rid ourselves of to much cronyism?

If you like the way it is now, thats ok.

Monarchies also had a lot of supporters that "liked the way it was then", so you are not alone


P.s: Hitler was also an "elected leader"

:wtf:

kick!!

Do you propose elections every 3 months, year, or what? Will the basic method (going to a polling station) change?

We then have to consider whether this would cause politicians to be campaigning so much that they would never get any work done. Or would the change in the system change our behaviour too, so that we pay less attention to the campaign, and more to their record?

I dont propose to do elections every X time. Instead that election be a continuous update of the national political support database. The process is basically the following: you go to the electoral office, update the state of your support to the options you most like, then your vote will be supporting those options until any of the following happens:

1) that option becomes unavailable, in that case, your support automatically sets to the blank (null) vote, until you go again and update again your support

2) you are unregistered from the elector database, which usually happens when you die

3) you go again (at any time) and update it again.

So im proposing that political support fluctuates, very much like Nasdaq fluctuates, but now fluctuations are driven by political citizens, not economical dolars. So the fixed terms dont exists anymore; is the people who decides how long a representative stays in their jobs.

The elected option at a given time is the one that has a simple majority of electors that support it at that time. As simple as that.


You ask about campaigns being continuous too? well, yes, they will be. Political options will be sold just as any other product, but very different to what really happens now, the elector, the citizen will have a vast amount of newly gained freedom to choose options, since now in a continuous election democracy, citizens dont just elect a politician, they actually support it. That means that they can withdraw that support at any time. Citizens political powers will be fully granted in fact, not just in vain paper

Its my guess that the campaign will soon sink into the white noise of the rest of the product marketing published in the available/mainstream media, and people will quickly develop tolerance to empty proposals.


cheers

that would work as a security valve in very rare, but possible circumstances where it may occur something that make people to start "waving their support around" randomly in a moderately sustained term. This would be, however, VERY unlikely to happen in a society of a few millions inhabitants

so I'll continue here. I apologise if you answered these questions from other people there.

How do you see parties working (if at all) in this system? Is it up to a party to nominate one candidate at a time, so they don't split their vote? When a lawmaker retires (or moves to a different post), does a party have to select a new candidate somehow (some sort of election organised through this official process, like primaries, or some internal process?), and then tell all its supporters to change their vote on a certain day (or in a short time period), or would there be some way a retiring candidate can ask for their support (or a proportion of it, perhaps) to be transferred? The latter looks open to abuse, while with the former, it might not be very easy to organise the handover successfully - in which case the 2nd choice party might get in for a short time, even if the previous and future candidates are both quite popular overall (I worry that if people don't have to vote on a given day, they will put it off and not get round to it for ages).

I think your stability filters would be needed, possibly quite often. Think how close the presidential vote for Florida was - if that had been a senator under your system, you could have had a different senator each week!

Parties as i understand them, work as a common ideological platform in a set of relevant issues to launch candidacies.


The idea of transferring the support from a candidate to another could be allowed as a additional supporting option ie: a candidate can be supported thru a individual support option, or a party support; the party support option would allow that support to be re-addressed by the party mechanisms, which of course could not be re-addressed after the addressed candidate becomes the new elected representative; This in order to prevent that parties use the re-addressing to coup down a representative, thing that can be done only by individual electors.

The question would be; ¿at what point the party is able again to re-address that option? Note that at least for personal candidacies one can restrain one option for candidate. If parties are allowed to have more than one party options, they could create a new option for a new candidate while a former option is still supporting the current representative, so one can safely forbid re-addressing while the supporting candidate is still in charge, without restraining parties to support an emerging candidate. At the end, the relative support of a party is going to relate to the trust they obtain from the electorship. Unclear manipulations of the vote would drive away supporters to the personal support modes


There are two interesting filters to consider: the first is the time average, already mentioned: the net support of options is equal to the average of the last 30 days of dairy support of each option

There is another more closely targeted for close margin supports; the transition filter: to a new option to become elected, it must exceed the currently elected option by the 1% of the currently elected option support. Note that in a close run of two senators, even if one of them now becomes slighty ahead of the current one running, it must yet have an additional 1% to get his job. Now, in order to the race condition occur again, the former senator will have to gain 2% above the support of the newly elected senator to become again senator. This will make the unusual close race condition even more difficult, since support will have to osccilate with a 2% amplitude. Very uncommon behaviour to see.

I thought about this filter precisely during the "florida incident"

cheers! :toast:

then we are in general terms, more scKrewd than i initially thought

because you'd surely need a constitutional amendment for it. It would be far more difficult to achieve that than something simple, like, say, getting a Democratic president, House of Representatives, and Senate all at once. Your ideas would change the whole political system so much that all the current lobbyists, and incumbent politicians with safe seats, would oppose it.

I like your idea of a vote either being a 'personal candidate' one, or a 'transferable party' one. That might send a good message to candidates and parties as well - either to candidates to not stray from the party line, if they find their personal vote going down, or to parties, to not replace a personally popular candidate. Right now, you can't tell if someone votes for a candidate, or party policy.

The best you can hope for right now is discussion. If voting reforms like this became talked about more, candidates might have to express a view; and then eventually you might be able to get something going. At the moment, DU posters may be thinking more in the short term.

my current purpose is to arouse debate about the topic, i know most people doesnt really worry about such long term goals anymore, too busy looking trees to see the forest again.. but anyway, i think that this is important enough to insist further on it

I thought about simmilar problem and than I found out what do we have to do and how are we going to achieve it.

This below is text about it. It explains some stuff.

Need for true democracy

In its essence, the actual political order is oligarchy. The centers of power own the media and finance political parties. By owning the media, centers of power shape public opinion according to their interests and needs. By influencing the people (the utmost authority in a democratic political order) and shaping their opinion through propaganda they maintain their oligopoly. Political parties carry out politics that suits power-holders, and not the governed people.

Oligarchy carefully destroys the real opposition, i.e. progressive political forces, all the while offering the public an illusory freedom of choice (for ex. the Democrats or the Republicans, the Labourists or the Tories, the SDP or the HDZ). At the same time, it turns public interest far away from the real problems and, therefore, slows societal progress down.

Having a closed and non-transparent structure, oligarchy creates lots of bottlenecks and arrears, which, in turn, constantly push it ever farther from the people’s interests. After a certain time, bad politics, the leading of which is left to those who are themselves the main obstacle to the realization of societal interests, causes a political crisis. At this point, oligarchy loses its political strength, the people become increasingly unsatisfied and revolutionary ideas build up their force. Revolution brings new political elite to power, but this one shows the same signs of corruption as the last one. All the while, the power centers stay far aside, often untouched. The whole process does not bring any significant progress, except for societal catharsis.

Result: today’s democratic order is, in its essence, equally democratic as the DDR or Saddam’s regime. The difference between those regimes may reside in the degree of open manipulation and repression. However, from the point of view of quality - dictatorship, one-party system and oligarchy are the same, because the real power does not belong to the people, but to the few members of the elite.


Internet-democracy

Thanks to the Internet, we are able to create a virtual interface for a direct political participation of all the members of a political community. Such an open forum, that enables the equality of all participants, as well as transparent political discussions, stimulates the advent of new political elite.

In itself, internet-democracy means the rule of open and transparent political elite. This elite consists of individuals competent in their respective areas (pedagogues, parents, sociologists, football players, etc.) Within the frame of internet-democracy, public opinion is created directly by those competent persons. The reason for this is the rise of the importance of responsibility, because a fully transparent system enables both an easy recognition of responsibility and penalization of any form of unwanted action.

As internet-democracy is a system where the right people are at the right places, it is necessary to clarify this concept.

A question for you. Are you going to take part in a discussion, if you, in effect, don’t have a clue about its issues, and if you will be held responsible for the consequences of your agitation? The answer is obvious – you aren’t. Common sense, this feature of any socially adapted human being, compels the individual to be silent if he or she could be held responsible for publicly declaring their opinions based on ignorance. This is a natural human defense mechanism, and competent individuals use it in internet-democracy when creating public opinion.

The openness and transparency of internet-democracy compel all participants in the political process to be prudent and just, because anybody’s unreliability can be proven very easily. Transparency makes it possible for everyone to spot any irregularity, and openness gives everybody the possibility of informing the public about it.

The political elite formed in this system is naturally filtered according to its contribution to the general betterment on all levels. This elite is the foundation of the internet-democracy. As any wrong move becomes obvious quite fast in a transparent system, the very openness of the system enables an easy replacement of a corrupted or, simply, bad cadre. The openness and easy accessibility of this system produce a permanent decentralization of power, lasting until the complete awakening of the people. This means the transformation of individuals from political objects into political subjects.

As you may have observed, there is no direct popular vote in this system. Direct voting can facilitate the processes in frequent referendums, but it is not the base of the idea of internet-democracy.


Political decisions in internet-democracy

The whole people do not have to be the arbiter in each political decision. This would be impractical, and, as we are about to explain, unnecessary. In this system, the people still can choose their delegates. The principle of horizontal communication makes it possible to solve political problems on the level of their appearance and under constant monitoring by the whole political community that protects and propagates the general interest. The openness and transparency of the system ensure that the solutions found are optimal for the political community (including the choice of the arbiter). This gives such a political body the legitimacy it requires.

The establishment of the internet-democracy

The forces that will establish the internet-democracy are, of course, the true democratic forces with the following political features:

* They take part in politics for the purpose of general benefit
* They trust in human beings and are not afraid of them
* They know that they are not, and that they can not be the cleverest

In an internet-democracy system, these features can not be faked, because only the truly democratic forces accept the complete transparency of their political actions. It is the main source of their power, i.e. their primary political interest.

The first step towards the establishment of the internet-democracy is the creation of the interface that will enable an adequate political communication – a two-way, horizontal and vertical contact of political subjects, unlimited by time or space. This is the project that the Tiaktiv organization is currently working on.

The second step is the gathering of democratic forces into an open exchange of ideas. Everyone who gets involved in this project will contribute information and other forms of their capital to the purposes of democratic movement performance optimization, and of the formation of an indestructible political force that will naturally get the people’s legitimacy in the next step.

The third step is the entrance of these forces into the existing bodies that presently have the people’s legitimacy. The fourth step is the complete transfer of politics to the Internet. The fifth step is to find adequate arbiters for solving political issues through the Internet interface. This fifth step, the transfer of political decision-making to the Internet interface, represents in itself the establishment of internet-democracy.

How do you instamatically keep track of whats going on.

Also how do you stop something like 911 giving the Republicans blank check to suspend the Constitution once everyone goes berserk for a few weeks following the event?

bank accounting technology can be adapted easily to the needs of an election system. People moves its support from a candidate to another just in the same way moves its money from an account to another

For stopping elections going berserk in short term you have the time average filter: the net support of options is equal to the average of the last 30 days of dairy support of each option. Even a dramatic surge (or fall) in support for a group will have a 15-day delay to be experience at fullest, and if it goes back as easily as it went up/down, then hardly would alter anything

I'm not sure I fully understand what you're suggesting, but it sounds like those who we elect to represent us would face constant and continuous election based on whether a majority supported them on any given issue.

Setting aside the logistical problems, I think this concept is fundamentally flawed.

IMO, it could only function if enough of the electorate participated -- and we're talking about continuous almost everyday effort on the part of voters.

But the degree of participation isn't my biggest concern. What worries me is that the vast majority of citizens simply do not have the time or inclination to delve into every policy and legislative consideration.

Their decions would be based on superficial information based on whatever political faction is best at putting their spin on the issue -- kind of what we have now, but accelerated and intensified.

Politicians would have even less time to actually work at the profession of governance because they are facing constant election.

And one thing they would even be less likely to do than they are now is to make the politically unpopular, but necessary and correct decision.

Our national policies would have very little coherence or continuity, and would be subject to the rule of the mob, and whatever political faction was best at manipulating this situation would wield power through this rule of the mob; in effect, ruling the mob.

Without a doubt, our democracy needs major reform. First and foremost IMO is eliminating the legalized bribery of political contributions -- all campaigns should be publicly financed (the public owns the airwaves, so we wouldn't have to pay for TV coverage) and contributions should be small and only by individuals. This would go a long way in making US their employers, not the corporations and special interests.

The other major change I would institute is IRV (instant runoff voting). This would break the grip of the two party system and introduce new ideas and revitalize our democratic process.

Charlls, your ideas are not without merit, but I think you are putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps one day when the majority of voters are much more involved and knowledgable, the pure democracy you envision can become a reality.

But take a look around you at the general population of eligible voters, and tell me you think they would make good experts on every piece of legislation.

Rather than true sovereign individuals, I fear we would have the rule of the mob (by those who are the best manipulators).

there is no 'everyday effort'. Once you have set your vote, you may go thirty years to the damn tibet, and when you would came back, you would still be supporting the same candidate you were supporting thirty damn years back, candidate which probably thirty years later will be dead or have just retired his option, meaning your vote would be reset to blank state

the 'logistical problems' are of the same order of 'logistical problems' your bank has to allow you to account your money instantly after a money withdraw. The technology is there (and has been there for almost 30 years)

'Decisions would be based on superficial information?' Is that you have the impression that _now_ Decisions are not based on superficial information? The Only Difference (listen carefully) The Only Difference with now would be that people can fix a mistake as soon as they realize it.

'rule of the mob' is how repubs call democracy (of course, when they arent ruling); they exploit freedom as a vulnerability to rule and deceive, but they would go nicely with a constitutional monarchy without complains.

... that comes to mind as I review what seems to be the key statement of your original post:

The stability of a elegible charge now relies precisely on those electors that are in this moment electorally supporting him. If those electors remove him that support, moving its support for that eligible charge to another candidate, and that other candidate reaches a new simple majority, he becomes the new elected representative for that charge.

and of your reply:

there is no 'everyday effort'. Once you have set your vote, you may go thirty years to the damn tibet, and when you would came back, you would still be supporting the same candidate you were supporting thirty damn years back, candidate which probably thirty years later will be dead or have just retired his option, meaning your vote would be reset to blank state

OK, here is what I envision (though not sure it is what you propose):

Every voter registers his/her support for each candidate that represents them in every elective office (local, state, federal).

That support remains the same until the voter changes it. If the candidate is no longer available for that office, it is the same as not voting for that office.

As long as a candidate maintains a simple majority, he/she stays in office. When a different candidate captures the majority, he/she assumes office.

The voter can participate or not participate; voting is continuous in that each voter's support for a particular candidate remains until that support is withdrawn and/or given to a different candidate.

Is this what you propose?

that is what i propose

I may have sounded a bit rude in my reply to you; im sorry about that, but is that same confusion keeps arising, but i suspect its my fault for not explaining it well enough. Also its because i dont find a good response on people on this topic, even in so-self-called democrats, and im starting to wonder why


Cheers :toast: