Ask HN: Can the US House and Senate be replaced with a website, should it?
I am very interested in discussion around this topic. Thanks for taking the time to look.
Please don't think I'm actually trying to implement this. just trying to further my understanding and develop my own opinions about the issues.
Con: voting fraud on roll call votes, AKA "Ghost Voting" when done in chambers[0].
[0] http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/09/23/ghost-voting-cal...
I know that I am glossing over a lot of technical issues, but in theory it should be possible. The question is mainly designed to spark discussion around representative democracy vs direct democracy and whether politicians actually contribute to or even help the country and its citizens.
I have purposely left out my opinions on this matter so I could hopefully see more sides of the conversation.
No, thank you. I'll stick with the mess we already have.
Also (and I know this is a tall order) the question assumes that we can solve these technical issues. This can actually be tamed at least partially by something akin to facebook's real-name policy. Facebook it seems is less prone (definitely not immune) to the armies of trolls and all it took was the complete removal of anonymity.
Yes, you could replace the US House and Senate with a web site, at least in theory. In doing so, though, you are changing the form of our government. You'd better think hard before you decide that you know better.
And, if you conclude that your idea is still a good one, then to actually implement it, you have to amend the Constitution. Unless you have a plan for doing that, the answer to the "can" question is "technically yes, politically no".
(In fairness to the idea, though, Congress has been showing a clear trend toward increasing dysfunction and uselessness for the past few decades...)
I would like to say that I do not necessarily feel this way, but I know a LOT of people who are slowly but steadily losing any faith they once had in our government. I know that switching to a direct democracy is drastic and would probably be a bad move, but I think we need to start finding ways to improve our current situation and that starts by asking questions.
Change them; if the electoral system isn't very good at that, probably fixing that is a more reasonable fix then abandoning representative democracy.
Reserving some direct democracy powers but not forcing voters tombe full-time legislators (as many US states do) is a more extreme, but still reasonable step.
In particular, an individual state can[1] change to preference voting (for example) without having to change the US Constitution.
[1] I think. IANAL, and still less am I a constitutional lawyer. There would almost certainly be a supreme court case by some election loser, claiming unequal representation or something. What the supreme court would do... I have no idea.
It was also deliberately set up to permanently enshrine slavery and overrepresent slave owners.
Do you think its possible that new advances in technology since 1776 might just enable direct democracy to avoid the degeneration you cite?
> to actually implement it, you have to amend the Constitution
I think we would actually have to rewrite the constitution. The definition of congress is a major section of the constitution and any amendment would basically have to rewrite large swaths of the original document.
No. It's the people who are the problem, not the technology. (In particular, think about all those people on Facebook amplifying false information during the last election cycle.)