[Ampu-dev] My idea of Direct Democracy

[steve]

I agreed with the writings i saw on kuro5shin.org.  Representative Democracy 
is inefficient, and  a throwback to when people could not be trusted to be 
educated enough to make their own decisions.  To continue with a system out 
of the sake of tradition is ridiculous.  It is time to move on to better 
things.  I think that better thing is Direct Democracy.
Please forgive me for being US-centric but that is where i live and my 
examples are for the US system.

I also agreed with the statement that Direct Democracy will allow for bad 
decisions.  That is both a positive and a negative.  The positive being that 
people can learn from their mistakes.  As we have it now- two or more parties 
blame each other for mistakes.  It is a never-ending cycle.  Nothing is ever 
gained or learned.  If a voter under Direct Democracy makes a bad decision, 
they cant hide from it, but instead can learn from it.
The negative of bad decisions is that is possible to infringe on Civil Rights 
of individuals in such a system.  Which is why i believe in the following 
implementation of Direct Democracy.

I feel that Direct Democracy ought to Inside-Out the current system.  Instead 
of whole-sale changes, it could be done inside our current system.  The 
benefit of this is that we could get the benefits of the new system AND still 
be afforded the protection of civil rights laws that exist now.
Again i feel this ought to be done in small centralized pockets, the ideal 
place would be a county or city council.  What would happen is the following.

A Direct Democratic candidate would run for local office, if elected this 
representative would NOT vote his/her conscience.  Instead we would re-write 
the definition of what a politician is.  It would be their job to disseminate 
information to the public.  (in the beginning) Registered Direct Democratic 
party members would retrieve this information online,  be able to research 
the topics, as well as add ideas and agendas, and to ultimately vote on 
issues.  Whatever the representatives constituents decide is how that person 
votes.  Libraries and other public institutions, could provide voting 
stations for those people without computers.  Or, the party could purchase 
voting stations.  So in this example, if the council had 7 members and at 
least 4 of them were Direct Democratic party members, then in essence, the 
citizens themselves would be making their own decisions.  The benefit of 
doing it this way, is that it is feasible, requires no changing of laws 
(outside-in'ing the system), and we are still afforded the protections of 
larger govt civil rights laws (so counties in Mississipi dont vote back in 
slavery! - no offense to those living in Mississipi!!!).
well i would like to write more, and will do so later, back to work

steve