Virtual Democracy

[Hyper Kinetic]

For those of you who aren't aware, Australia is about to have elections.

I've stumbled (well... Facebook invited by a friend) across an interesting party:
Senator Online

The basic premise is that they, assuming that their candidates get elected, will place polls on the internets about various issues. Once they hit a critical mass of unique votes, the majority view is the stance taken by the party at that point in time.
There are various failsafes that they seek to use in order to limit the effectiveness of poll rigging, such as using the Australian Electoral Roll and computer analysis of votes.

Sounds kinda interesting.

As far as I know, there are a few other countries who have/have had similar sort of political parties.

What do you think not only of the party but also of a similar idea/ideal of a Virtual Democracy?
Personally, in today's society where information is easily spread, I like the concept. According to their website, 80+% of Australians have direct access to the internets. Sure, not all of them would actually vote in it... but the possibility is pretty good.
The down side is for those who do not have the internet not being able to participate, but public libraries and other access points are available.
In practice, it would all depend on how the site gets rolled out. They do have a demonstration of how it would look, indicating that they will show both sides to an argument, pros and cons etc.
Voter polling also plays a critical factor. If no one votes, or not enough people vote, the party abstains from voting in the senate... making it essentially a wasted seat.

Virtual Democracy as a whole: Good idea, flawed idea or just plain bad?

[Psychichobo]

Hmm... speaking as someone whose idea of technical expertise is to hit it til it starts working again, I'd be worried about whether things could be rigged or affected or not. Still, it's not sometihng that'd happen as much as it would in the average African pseudo-democracy, so it doesn't seem too bad.

Problem is, a significant amount of the population aren't computer literate. So it'd possibly be an idea that would be better off being put off for a short time, maybe?

[The Oddity]

It's an interesting idea, and the idea of a nation run as an actual democracy seems appealing, I find it a bit of a terrifying prospect.

The problem is that it assumes that everyone will be engaged enough in every issue to fully understand it and voice their opinion. The reality, I fear, is that with so many issues to examine, and legislation being complex, the only people that will vote for an issue will be those that have very strong opinions and/or are organized by a third party. And people that are happy with the status quo are less likely to be those people. So you may end up with policy controlled by an assortment of small but interested special interest groups rather then by the majority.

Further complicating matters is that fact that you don't have anyone responsible for the system as a whole so nobody will want to make the hard choices. There will be a tendency to vote yourself good stuff and ignore the rest. Who wants to vote for free broadband for everyone? How about new and improved roads? More and better hospitals? Now, who wants to vote for more taxes to pay for that stuff? Nobody? How about who wants to vote for cutting taxes in half? Everyone? I just don't see it working.

Now, the system you describe isn't actually a full blown democracy, but it is a step in that direction and I just don't see it working as well as people think it would.

[The DeathJester]

If ( althought highly illegeal) one party managed to hack that system by getting 2 votes for every one vote the opposistion gained, I think the cheating could win unfairly and get away with it.

In comparision to the real world of election booths, people cannot cheat ( unless bribed) because humans are watching, A machine can't check secruity as well as a human can.

I dont think its a good idea, eventually the system will be rigged.

[Enigma]

I see anonymous getting Australian proxies and raiding... not a good idea

[WestRider]

Even setting aside the technical issues, this is what's known in Statistics as a Voluntary Response Survey, and they have huge problems with bias, because only those who feel very, very strongly about something tend to participate in them. As a result, They'd often end up with situations where the majority of the population is generally in favour of something, but doesn't really care that much, but a very dedicated Minority are strongly opposed to it, and because they do care enough to go vote on it every time, that poll will show opposition to that issue even though most residents are actually in favour.

[Jason]

I have to say that it is a good idea, but it is far too Utopian an idea to actually work.

[Captain Malachi]

The points made by Westrider, and whoever else said it (sorry, I can't be bothered to read through the whole thread again), kinda prove why we have governments making these decisions in the first place. They have the time to vote on everything, your average joe doesn't. Overall, I think it's one of these things that sounds great, until you look at it in detail and it all falls apart.

[Hyper Kinetic]

To my mind, the question is whether or not the general public (if such a system were enacted) would react to those with more strongly held views.
As far as I can tell, the idea is to get more people engaged with the political process. The more people do, the more people are informed of what is happening, the more people make informed decisions, the more people get involved... and so on.

Perhaps useful as a tool when there is a minority of senators utilising such a system, but not so good when there is a majority as lobby groups will have more power?

[carnogaunt]

Aug 9, 2010 15:10:57 GMT The Oddity said:

The problem is that it assumes that everyone will be engaged enough in every issue to fully understand it and voice their opinion. The reality, I fear, is that with so many issues to examine, and legislation being complex, the only people that will vote for an issue will be those that have very strong opinions and/or are organized by a third party. And people that are happy with the status quo are less likely to be those people. So you may end up with policy controlled by an assortment of small but interested special interest groups rather then by the majority.

Further complicating matters is that fact that you don't have anyone responsible for the system as a whole so nobody will want to make the hard choices. There will be a tendency to vote yourself good stuff and ignore the rest. Who wants to vote for free broadband for everyone? How about new and improved roads? More and better hospitals? Now, who wants to vote for more taxes to pay for that stuff? Nobody? How about who wants to vote for cutting taxes in half? Everyone? I just don't see it working.

The irony here is that these are problems that already exist in all democracies. Generally, people have two options to influence a representative democracy: voting, and communicating with legislators. Obviously, legislators will pay more attention to larger entities like interest groups and corporations than to individual citizens, in fact they probably don't read letters or emails from individuals. However, their staff will read and pay attention to trends in these messages to help the legislator get reelected in the next term. The electronic system just skips the middleman.

If anything, the electronic system will be less influenced by interest groups because it will be more accessible to the general public.

[virado]

All of this reminds me of the Geth from ME2. They have a really good system of government that sounds like a real good idea