Some people think the American governmental system is the ideal form of government. Those people are hopeless.

Many people think the American governmental system is the best form of government that they've ever heard of. My aim here is to change that.

Part of the Problem

  1. No Proof of Votes - Since votes are anonymous, they're easy to steal in a close election. They're also impossible to recall.
  2. Expensive Campaigning - Since an elected official typically lasts for about 4 years, there's a lot at stake at an average election, so candidates have an incentive to "prepare" for it.
  3. Delayed Accountability - For the same reason, an elected official has a lot of power during his elected period, and generally can't lose his position until his 4 years are up.
  4. Politicians Mingle - Politicians in governmental bodies tend to form their own "clubs," where they mingle with each other rather than with their voters.
  5. Politicians Have Friends - Due to #2, elected officials tend to owe people favors when they get into power.

A Partial Solution

  1. Standing Votes - By placing votes in a public database, and not hiding identities of people (although not necessarily connecting their "voting" identities and their "real" identities ... the same idea as digitally signing something with a "digital" identity, without ever revealing your real-world identity), individuals are able to make sure their votes aren't mislogged (by accident or otherwise), and to recall their vote if they feel they voted for the wrong guy. It also means you don't have to vote every term, only when you want to change your vote.
  2. 1 Day Terms - If your term is only one day, you won't spend all your money campaigning, since it's not worth it, plain and simple.
  3. Daily Accountability - For the same reason, once you get elected, you're not going to do something stupid, since you'll probably be gone tomorrow if you do.
  4. No Political Clubs - Again, single day terms don't give people enough time to form alliances.
  5. No Favors - If you don't put every cent you have into your campaign, you don't need to get more cents from people who'll expect a return on their investment when you win office.
  6. 3-Day Cooling Off Period - All government contracts need to wait 3 days after signing before clearing. This gives voters the opportunity to oust idiots and undo some of the damage they cause.

Possible Mechanics

I know a lot of people will complain that daily office changes and daily voting sessions will be expensive, but if that's the only reason not to make the changes I proposed, then we owe it to ourselves to appoint a task force to explore the available methods for saving money. I, for one, would gladly volunteer to spill the beans on a hosted system that could manage everything but the assignment of digital keys (for security reasons, the hosted system should not have access to that info) for no more than a buck for each newborn plus a couple of thousand bucks flat fee per month, while giving me a nice profit. With all the technology experts that the government has access to, I'm sure they could design and build their own system and save even more, so unless they give me a mandate (or unless somebody here really thinks such a system is impossible in the 3rd Millenium), I think it's silly for me to waste my time on it.

Likely Outcome

At the beginning, you'll likely have politicians shuffling in and out of office every day. As time goes on, though, the short "Who's who" list of familiar-sounding politicians will start getting caught in scandals, and those guys will quickly find themselves out of office more often than in it (not that I necessarily believe that every politician is a scumbag, but it's fairly obvious that most of the well-known ones are ... again, the system's to blame). In the meantime, people who really want to make the world a better place will start gathering votes quietly. Some will make it into office for a few days every now and then, and will kill deals that corrupt guys before them made. Give them some time, and they'll start gaining popular support. However, these new politicians will need to be careful not to do anything stupid, since they're always one step away from being gone.

It's important to note the distinction between doing something "stupid" and doing something "unpopular:"
Something "stupid" is something that people think is bad at the time, and that people agree is bad after the fact.
Something "unpopular" is something that people think is bad at the time, but realize they were wrong about afterwards.
Now, it's obvious that politicians who do "unpopular" things are likely to lose office over them, but in the long run, they'll get it back (possibly only years later), and will find it a lot harder to lose office next time they make an "unpopular" decision. (Guilt is an amazingly powerful motivator.) These are the people who "deserve" to be running the government, if you want to look at it that way: it's about the closest approximation to a Meritocracy that we can get. Sure, there'll be some who find ways to abuse the system (tricking people into voting for them even after they screw their voters over), but they'll always be walking a tightrope, and most people can't (or don't really want to) hold on for too long. (Compare that to the current system, where the "good" guys are the ones walking the tightrope.)

Further Ideas

While the solution I propose above would definitely help, it's far from solving everything that's wrong with the American system. The fundamental problem is that most people simply don't care enough to get out and cast their votes, to complain when their representatives wrong them, and to make a special point of not voting for people who say one thing and do another, regardless of what "the alternative" is. Correcting the problem is easier said than done with our current system, though. The solution I proposed above is aimed at giving more power back to the people, so that "caring" becomes easier for the average voter.

My expectation is that by giving more power back to the people, we'll be encouraging people to work towards a more perfect union.

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I would like to make a small point in passing about linking your "voting" identity and your "real" identity. In my experience, the main reason people tend to cite for not wanting that link made (forcing them to build the ridiculously expensive voting mechanism we currently use) is that employers might (and in fact, probably will - Cingular, for instance, has discriminated against at least two religious Jews, and a manager has noted that they make a practice of doing so ... even if we make a law to disallow discrimination based on voting record, we know it'll be just as effective as the current laws disallowing discrimination based on color, sexual preference, etc.) discriminate against them on that basis. Now, if we all had our own little "Mom & Pop" shops, those "we won't hire you" statements would, of necessity, turn into "we won't do business with you." On the surface, that might seem to be a useless distinction, but if you and all your gay friends publish the list of people you know who haven't done business with you and there's an obvious trend by certain people to avoid doing business with all of you, it'll be pretty easy for you to publicly speculate that this avoidance may be deliberate. Also, keep in mind that this particular person isn't your only customer, so if he doesn't buy from you but all gays (and all people who don't like people who discriminate against gays) don't buy from him, he'll probably lose far more than you will. (I'd like to believe that there are far more "good" people than "bad" people, and "good" people will never support somebody who discriminates against others as a matter of policy. (I'm not a "good" person, since I support Cingular, but the way the government's decided to regulate the cellular telecommunications industry has left me with little choice in the matter, so at least I have an excuse.)) Now, if he's the only game in town, then fine, you may have to pool resources and start up a competitor. What if he's a legal monopoly? I'd suggest nuking the braindead law that made him one. (If he has a government mandate and can't produce a costs/benefits analysis to back up his refusal to do business with gays, he's very likely to lose his mandate in short order after the government notices, since nobody wants to lose office over failing to nuke a bad law.) It goes without saying that I'm not picking on gays only; everything above applies to all minorities, and to a lesser extent, even to individual people who happened to look at somebody important the wrong way. It also applies to people who are known to vote for a particular person, and therefore obviates the need for unlinking "voting" identities from "real" identities.

Now, you ask, why would we want to go back to the days of "Mom & Pop" shops? I won't answer that here, but the system I proposed above allows us not to link identities if we don't want to, so it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

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Disclaimer

I don't necessarily believe that any type of Democracy is the ideal form of government (in fact, I happen to believe in a certain type of Dictatorship, but that's irrelevant to the discussion at hand, since I'm not arguing for it here), but the current system has certain critical flaws, and my proposal aims to fix some of them. (Hint: Don't vote for me ... I might kill your sons, rape your daughters, and walk off with all your posessions. . .) I just want to make sure that nobody walks away from here with a mistaken idea of my beliefs.

Feedback

I'd appreciate a neutral third party setting up an unmoderated list with archives (if you mail me, and I'll add your list info to this page), so people can post feedback without having to worry about me removing it if I don't agree with it, or whatever. I don't plan to post to said list, but I intend to discuss all actual feedback here. (If there's anything other than SPAM that appears in the list (i.e., actual feedback by definition) but not here, there are only two possibilities: (a) I haven't had the chance yet to put it up here (with or without comment on my part), or (b) I'm hoping nobody will notice it. Either way, it's a bug, and even intentional bugs ought to be fixed.)

Apparently, no neutral (or otherwise) third party is interested in setting up an unmoderated (or otherwise) list with (or without) archive, so I guess I'll simply post feedback here, for the time being:

How can you judge a representative after one day in office and kick him out?
That's a question of judgement that in a Democratic system should be left up to each individual person to make for himself. If the system forces you to keep your vote on a guy when you (for whatever reason) have decided you no longer want to vote for him, the system is preventing you from excercising your best judgement (and hence, diverges from the definition of Democracy). Moreover, such a system provides incentive for a representative to do whatever he wants for most of his guaranteed term, and to then try expensive PR tactics towards the end of his guaranteed term in order to obtain another guaranteed term (basically, by fooling you into voting for him again, since he knows your vote is captive once it's cast). Such a strategy is impractical when your guaranteed term is only a single day, since you end up spending a bit of each day on expensive PR tactics. (Campaigning for office every day isn't exactly practical, especially if you want to have a list of accomplishments to show off.) Now, since it's well known that the prevailing strategy is just that, here in the US, it should be a top priority for us to change the ballgame, since such abuse undermines the basis of Democracy. (Remember, a representative is called a representative because he's supposed to represent the people who voted for him. Only those people can decide whether he actually represents them or not, and they shouldn't have to wait more than a day if they change their minds, especially in a world where politicians never sign legally binding contracts during their campaigns.)
Why should politicians be allowed to make promises and then break them, in the first place?
That's the perfect question. If a businessman makes a false promise to you, it's called fraud (unless the fine print in his "terms of service" disclaims all promises, of course); if a politician makes a false promise, it's called Indirect Democracy. We've created a caste system, where common folk are in a lower class than politicians, and hence have stricter rules (and stiffer penalties). The fundamental cause of all our political problems is right there. If politicians sat in jail, paid penalties, and were found financially liable in civil suits where people who voted for them lost money because they didn't follow through on their promises, politicians would be so careful in office that nothing would ever get done without a referendum. You might think that'd stall progress, but I'd counter that stalling progress isn't necessarily a bad thing, since we're also stalling "regress." Our primary problem in this country isn't that we're not making progress fast enough; it's that we're actually moving backwards with a variety of stupid laws and regulations that get rushed through Congress without a single referendum and in clear contradiction of poll results. Since government officials aren't scared to make stupid decisions for their voters without even asking them first, they're able to destroy everything our founding fathers got right much faster than we're able to toss them through the revolving door that only spins up every few years. (For an obvious example, notice how intellectual property has gone from a privilege granted by the people for their own benefit to a God-given right, while freedom of speech has gone from a God-given right to a privilege granted by the government as long as it doesn't interfere with IP owner rights.) The techniques I presented in this page were designed to put the fear of the revolving door in politicians everywhere, but truth be told, I'm not attacking the real problem head-on. Simply enforcing Common Law principles against politicians the same way they're enforced against non-politicians is the ideal solution. The reason I didn't propose this solution above is that it'll never happen, for Sociological reasons. Remember, we're a "Star" society. We love to see a star standing out from his surrounding. We can't hold a "Star" to the same standards we hold ourselves to, since he's "special," and therefore deserves special consideration. As long as our society admires a star more than a piece in the puzzle, we'll always have a caste system in our hearts, and so we won't really _want_ a classless legal system. If you're a parent, you can try to solve that problem locally by teaching your kids to appreciate everything and everyone for being an equally important piece of God's universe. If they recognize God as the only "Star," then we become one nation under God; otherwise, we're just a bunch of subjects under a government with noble (and hypocritical) claims of being by the people and for the people. Even if you solve the problem locally, though, there are about 300 million other Americans who won't solve the problem locally, so you won't see the problem solved nationally ... hence my national proposal to attack the revolving door instead.
If we slow progress/regress down to a crawl, how will we deal with crisis situations?
The bad news is that I can't answer that question. The good news is that the answer wouldn't matter, anyway. See, our status quo makes no guarantees about how it'll deal with crisis situations. Just look at the recent government bailout. I'd say doing nothing would've been substantially better than doing what we did, and I'm guessing most Americans would probably agree. (If the government has that much money lying around, give it back to the people - it's a couple thousand bucks per person. You say too many people have built their retirements on that crap? I say those people are idiots, and the rest of us shouldn't be stuck bailing _them_ out.) Let's assume, for argument's sake, though, that most Americans think I'm an idiot for thinking this. How does my proposed government system deal with the crisis? Simple: government officials run referendums, and go with the majority opinion. Under our assumption that most Americans disagree with me, we end up with identical results to what we currently have, but at least everybody knows that his vote actually counts, and that Democracy prevailed. (With the status quo, by comparison, all people know is that the government makes its own decisions without knowing or caring what the people think.) Under the assumption that most Americans agree with me, on the other hand, my proposed system does measurably better than achieving parity with the current system, in that it avoids a costly and un-Democratic bailout that only destroys our country. In other words, my "roadblock" system doesn't prevent the (Democratically) right thing from happening; it only prevents the (Democratically) wrong thing from happening. Put another way, my roadblocks don't prevent us from dealing with crisis situations in an efficient manner when there's consensus about how to deal with them; they only prevent our government representatives from rushing to deal with crisis situations in a way that we don't approve of. The school of thought that says that a "true leader" sometimes needs to "take the initiative" and make unpopular decisions against his constituents' consensus is left over from the "Star" world-view, and is very un-Democratic by definition. (Those people are better off with a Dictatorship. I happen to be among them, but that's a whole separate topic.) If the guy is really such a good leader, he should be able to explain why his unpopular proposed decision is correct, and then it won't be so unpopular anymore, now, will it? Under our current system, we just trust him to do what's right, cross our fingers, and hope for the best: if he's done his campaigning right, we award him what essentially amounts to a Dictatorship for a few years, which he promptly starts abusing. Ask shareholders to do the same thing in the stock market, and you'll hear the SEC crying mutiny ... see the double standard? The system is broke, and it needs fixing.
What about immediate-response-necessary crises, like an incoming declaration of war?
That's a fundamental weakness of (Indirect or otherwise) Democracy, as ancient Athens itself demonstrated. Luckily, most immediate-response-necessary crisis types have pretty obvious responses, and it's highly unlikely that a politician will lose office for taking an obvious decision on himself (and if the people are stupid enough to fire him for doing so, time will most likely prove him right anyway), so we see that virtually any type of Indirect Democracy (including my "roadblock" system) has countermeasures already implemented. Put another way, while the fundamental problem is impossible to solve in a Democracy, my system isn't measurably worse than the current system at wrestling with it. In fact, my system enjoys a potential advantage from the honest politician's perspective, in that because people know their vote also counts tomorrow and not just today, they're more likely to give a politician the benefit of the doubt if they're not quite sure one way or the other, knowing that they can always nuke him tomorrow if he turns out to be a moron, without having to wait four more years for their next "window of opportunity."
You talk about a hosted system to manage the vote database; I assume you mean something on the Internet. You must be aware that there are many people who don't have (or don't want) Internet access. Your solution discriminates against them.
That's a rather silly allegation, since even if you don't have Internet access, there must be somebody you trust who does. If you trust your local public library, give your key to them, and tell them your vote orally, in a note, or whatever. If you trust your local public school, give them your key, and have your kids relay your vote to school officials. (That's an easy way to get your kids involved in the Democratic process very early, BTW.) If you trust your grandson in LA, give him your key, and call your vote in to him. Since your key only identifies you for voting purposes, no trust in anybody is necessary beyond a simple trust that he'll only use your key to vote as directed by you. Also, since the key is just a sequence of bits and bytes and can easily be invalidated and reissued (should be about as easy as reissuing a drivers license, and should cost a heck of a lot less, since we're not trying to generate revenues here, and the key isn't physical, meaning we can simply reflash the same USB stick you've had since you turned 18), you don't need to worry too much about whether you'll trust the guy long-term to always vote for you as directed; if you have a fight with your grandson for example, and think he might not be trustworthy anymore, just get yourself a new key and give it to somebody else. "Giving your key" to somebody means plugging your USB stick into his computer for a couple of minutes, so he can read the key off it. (Remember, the "key" is just a plain text file that's trivial to copy. You don't need to physically surrender the device in order to give somebody a copy of the key that's stored on it.) You maintain physical posession of the USB stick, so new hardware is not necessary when you decide you want a new key (for any reason, or for no reason at all). Now, if you decide you want a new USB stick (say, it got run over by a bus), keep in mind that in the volumes we're talking about, these sticks should cost the government about a dollar each (plus another dollar for the employee time necessary to deal with the guy who lost his stick), and asking the guy to reimburse the government $2 (or to bring along a floppy disk, a recordable CD/DVD, his own USB stick, or something else that can be written to - or just offering to give him a paper printout of the key and letting him break his own head typing it in manually to use it) is hardly unreasonable. Note that replacing any of the forms of ID that you currently have to show before voting costs far more than this, so if you don't already consider that a form of "poll tax" or "literacy test," I don't see how you could make a case for this being one, either. If this really becomes a sticking point, I guess we could encode the key as a barcode, and hand out hard copies for free as often as necessary. You'd then have to summon your scanner (plus some free software for reading the barcode) in order to get the key into your computer. We could then set up self-serve "voting booths" at public schools, libraries, town halls, etc., where you can feed your paper and cast your votes, if you don't have your own scanner (or if your computer decides to act up on exactly the day you wanted to vote, or whatever). Obviously, this "plan B" option will cost substantially more than my "plan A" above, but it's still a heck of a lot cheaper than our current voting apparatus, while still being a lot more effective.
So, you're good at talking. You and I are the only two who care, though, and neither of us cares enough to do anything about it, so let's just accept that nothing's going to change.
That's a rather self-defeatist attitude. I'm running for US President in 2020. All you have to do is vote for me, because just like with the New York Lotto, Hey, you never know!

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Copyright (C) 2008-2009 Dave Cohen; permission granted to modify and/or redistribute subject to the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 or later