A funny policy proposal // Asynchronous voting

[CreamCat]

Right now, in a democracy, voting happens synchronously every few years.

It is very inefficient and lowers participation rate.

In an asynchronous democracy, you would get a text message saying

Quote

It's been two years since you voted for Spider King. You are now free to change your vote to someone else. If you don't do anything, we assume that your support for Spider King continues. Once you vote again, your vote lasts for 2 years after which you can choose another candidate.

A vote can last a few months instead of 2 years, too. The voting schedule is flexible, and anyone can vote when it's convenient.

Since this form of asynchronous voting is far more efficient, direct democracy can be implemented on top of asynchronous voting for presidents and congress.

There could be an online voting arena where each province and each federal government submit policy proposals that last for up to 12 months.

Since direct democracy is going to affect a lot of people, it's going to attract a lot of attention and incentivize people to vote.

 

However, I don't know if any country is bold enough to allow such radical changes for the foreseeable future.

Edited September 30, 2019 by CreamCat

[Leo Gura]

Lots of problems with this model.

How would a new political candidate ever get noticed? Voting would be reduced to a perfunctory process which few people would get engaged in. It would be hard to build a consensus for anything new progressive policy proposal.

It's important that we have national debates and conversations about which direction the country should go in. At least election cycles allow for that. Clear cut election cycles make people more engaged I think. Otherwise everything will get muddled and luke-warm. It will be hard to even know who's in office.

It would be better to just make voting day a national holiday.

[CreamCat]

53 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

How would a new political candidate ever get noticed? Voting would be reduced to a perfunctory process which few people would get engaged in. It would be hard to build a consensus for anything new progressive policy proposal.

That's assumptions. Before we test it for long enough, we cannot know the ramifications.

We could test this model in small private organizations and scale it upward later.

If it works, it's going to scale up gradually.

Edited September 30, 2019 by CreamCat

[Leo Gura]

22 hours ago, CreamCat said:

That's assumptions. Before we test it for long enough, we cannot know the ramifications.

We could test this model in small private organizations and scale it upward later.

If it works, it's going to scale up gradually.

Sure you can test it, but before a thing even deserves to be tested, you gotta at least explain how it should work in theory.

If your plane cannot even fly in theory, testing it will not magically make it fly.

[CreamCat]

37 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Sure you can test it, but before a thing even deserves to be tested, you gotta at least explain how it should work in theory.

If your plane cannot even fly in theory, testing it will not magically make it fly.

I'm already feeling that I'm diving deeper into delusions by theorizing more.

If mistakes are very expensive to make, I better invest more time on theory.

If I could make small mistakes, it's often better to just test it and refine my theory.

So, I'd rather make mistakes as cheap as possible than invest more time in theory.

A good rule of thumb is to choose the minimal solution for the most profitable problem at hand.

Without getting my hands wet in reality, it's hard to form theories.

Theory and practice go hand in hand.

Edited October 1, 2019 by CreamCat

[CreamCat]

That said, I may just address your concerns here.

On 9/30/2019 at 8:19 PM, Leo Gura said:

a perfunctory process which few people would get engaged in

A perfunctory process may not necessarily engage less people. In my imagination, it could accelerate politics although accelerating politics too much is not very good.

Make a voting website. People can regularly visit the voting website to vote for candidates and vote for individual policies.

I suspected this could engage people better because it's fun and fast. You don't have to drive to a building.

You can turn the entire process into a fun game. You make it far easier to vote, and people will do it more often.

I don't know about you, but I'd definitely vote more often if I had access to a voting website.

The voting website could even have forums and subforums although forums can become a nightmare.

You could also install voting kiosks in libraries. Voting could be made ubiquitous and frequent.

But, this could be a security nightmare since there would be a lot of incentives to rig it.

Edited October 3, 2019 by CreamCat