Will voting become obsolete?

^ You get arrested, presumably. It's a crime.

If you're blank-voting, oh well. At least we know that you have some objection to the parties available, and aren't just being lazy. *shrug*

Abandoning democracy, no matter how badly damaged it may be, is tantamount to suicide for all but the ruling class. Whenever people complain about it, I always think of this quote:
“Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Winston Churchill

Eric,

The one signifact problem with the current democratic system that could be fixed, is that it is based on a mechanism from an age when four years were like an instant. Nowadays, when the will of the citizens can shift in a matter of hours, four years are a whole era.

It's one thing that democracy is indirect in the matter of representatives, of course the average citizen can't be expected to understand the specialized jobs of lawmaking, economy, etc. The roblem is, that it is temporally indirect, we have one day in 4 years to represent what we want, and even if the leaders pull a blatant I Lied, we have to wait years to remove them.

Even though aleady have the technology to organize a continual election, where officials could be removed the day they lose their legitimacy, or keep them for decades if they do their job properly.

"What happens if you don't gp and refuse to pay?

Think it through."

You'll get a letter asking nicely to pay a small fine, which will never be enforced because nobody is going to bother sending debt collectors after you for a measly twenty bucks.

I'm amused by the difference in opinion over the term length. Namely a lot of people here seem to operate under the delegate model for representation, where as a lot of my class mates, being the elitist douche bags they are, operate under the trustee model and want politicians to be free from the constant pressure by the uninformed masses.

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How is having politicians spending half their time in office campaigning supposed to be a good thing?

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Forcing them to stand election makes them more accountable. Depends on what you view as being the problem of democracy: the politicians or the voters.

Obligatory self promotion: http://unemployedacademic.tumblr.com/

It can also mean doing things which are, in no uncertain terms, not good in the long run, but appeal to the people (and thus garner votes) in the short-term.

edited 22nd Apr '11 6:29:55 AM by AllanAssiduity

That's the fundamental problem with Democracy.

Extend the terms out too long and people have less say in government than they should to make government responsive to their needs, make terms too short and there's an unending electoral cycle, and no willingness to take a risk on a long term strategy.

Obligatory self promotion: http://unemployedacademic.tumblr.com/

Maybe politicians shouldn't take short term risks. After all, risks are risky.

If politicians don't take risks because the people don't want them to take risks, that's okay, actually. That's just democracy in action, the will of the people being executed.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

That would result in getting into a stalemate where you endlessly talk about lowering taxes while simultaneously maintaining all government services with no meaningful cuts. ;) You know that saying about trying to please everyone all of the time?

Voter education is needed here in a real and meaningful sense, but I'm not sure how it could be done without becoming hopelessly affiliated with either the left or the right and therefore treated as an enemy by the opposition.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Representative democracy would probably function best (for values of best equal to "most democratic given the compromise with representation rather than direct democracy", not "most humane" or anything like that) with parliamentary supremacy and a ban on running for re-election.

Gerrymandering, focusing on lobbyists who will pay for your re-election rather than constituents, and the judiciary's trump make voting in America quite pointless.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

Well, then the country suffers. But if the country has before chosen to fare that path, that's just fair. As I've said elsewhere, democracy is not about good governance. It's about granting everybody the basic right to political participation. A government can only order the people around, legitimately, because the people have chosen it. Ideally, it should not be seperated from the people at all, but be merely an execution and coordination of their wishes and demands.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

The only way I'd support compulsory voting is IF I got a "None of these above candidates" option with meaning, namely they'd be BANNED for running for the office in another election.

Engineering public policy around short-term whims is stupid, “third way” politicians like New Labour and the Democratic Leadership Council tried this in the '90s, and it resulted in huge long-term problems (I recommend watching this Adam Curtis documentary on the topic, viewable here.) The biggest flaw with democracy now isn't that it moves slowly, I think it's that there's too many “wasted votes” under the current “first past the post” and non-proportional systems, which literally makes losing voters powerless.

Big parties are too secure, making it easier for the holders of power under the current status quo to strangle dissent. As the size (both in geography and population) of democracies increased, older mechanisms became vulnerable to abusive practices such as gerrymandering and parliamentary realpolitiking.

The best panacea I can imagine are measures like fully at-large representation, party lists, and instant runoff votes, to make the formation and destruction of viable parties easier, and thus eliminate frustrating vote wastage.

Eric,

At-large representation also increases the powers of special interests and parties.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

The power of voters in the United States is quite nominal, yet we tend to be pretty obedient.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

"yet we tend to be pretty obedient"

Well it is a government. Isn't that almost what it means?

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

Hopefully when the robots take over, they won't need to waste time with that pesky democracy thing.

Fight smart, not fair.

@storyyeller: That's kinda' the whole point. “Special interests” are people with a political axe to grind, which includes every informed voter, and “political parties” (under a system that allowed very tiny ones to exist, and large ones to explode) are any group of people who agree with each other, which includes every voter who's not a repulsive sociopath (and a few who are.)

Eric,