http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660The pirate party proposes a fluid democracy, which is like a direct democracy, but you may delegate your vote to anyone you wish, who may delegate onward and so forth. So you end up with a few people who can actually have some clout to negotiate with.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment15http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment15Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:45:24 GMTThe problem is countries tend to be run by some Sir Humprey, from a dark, smoky room.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment13http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment13Wed, 23 Jan 2013 12:01:24 GMTNice post and very true. A solution might be somewhat harder to find, unfortunately.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment12http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment12Wed, 23 Jan 2013 10:17:23 GMTDaniel, In such a system, you suffer from other problems. 1) Who can propose a topic? Who actually phrase the topic that will become law? 2) How do you ensure feedback during the vote process? 3) What about complex things? This sort of system is very vulnerable to the crowd effect. 4) What about emergency issues? How do you resolve them?http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment11http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment11Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:51:33 GMTThis is why I believe that the system in Switzerland is awesome. Unlike in most other countries, they embrace direct democracy, effectively letting you vote on topics instead of politicians and parties. With the Internet at hand, we could easily make a poll for 2-3 topics every month leave that stupid left/right stuff aside.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment10http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment10Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:42:07 GMTRange Voting! It's like Approval Voting on crack. Instead of checking a box, you give each candidate a score of 0-100 (or null). The candidate that is the least offensive to everyone wins. I dunno how this would work in a Parliamentary system though. http://rangevoting.org/http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment9http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment9Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:13:18 GMTJames, it's only systems that involve ranking that can't pick the most acceptable candidate. Systems that don't rank candidates (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting) are able to pick the candidate that the largest number of people would approve of.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment8http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment8Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:52:16 GMTI get the various objections around politics, politicians, etc. I've always been frustrated with the narrow views you're forced into with left/right. I found this was a great tool for clarifying people's thinking around party affiliations: http://www.politicalcompass.org/ http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment7http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment7Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:06:52 GMTThis is not even a continuum, but 1 discrete option out of several available. This should be enough to convince anyone that democratic election is a scam.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment6http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment6Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:54:27 GMTI have the same problem as Ayenda when talking about politics. They allways seem to map a multi dimentional model onto a 1 dimentional line. But there is no function which describes this pattern. It's allways up to the "Political Journalists" who pretend to be all knowing about this. Graphically there is no way we can display anything more than 3 dimensions, so we either shouldn't or limit the discussions to 3 topics.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment5http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment5Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:47:25 GMTActually, elections are pretty interesting from a mathematical point of view. For example, it's been proven that it's impossible to construct a voting system that always accurately reflects the majority view of the electorate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theoremhttp://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment4http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment4Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:35:43 GMTWhy? His post does not discuss any political points. The whole post is discussing the complexity of finding agreement in such a 'mess' of different opinions / needs / requirements. Be it software-development or politics.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment3http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment3Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:17:09 GMTThat's the inherent problem with parliamentary democracy... Only fix I see is become a dictator in your country :)http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment2http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment2Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:06:39 GMTPlease, turn off comments for this post.http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment1http://ayende.com/160769/elections#comment1Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:56:05 GMT