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Comment by ilovetux | Hacker News Reader

I know this question is rather vague, but the basic idea is that a web-based application could be created with every American having an account. The purpose of the application would be to allow votes on each political issue from participating citizens (instead of representatives and senators) as it comes up for a vote.

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.

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The US government was deliberately not set up to be a direct democracy. Those writing the Constitution looked at the historical examples before their time, and concluded that direct democracy was too prone to degenerate into mob rule. So they didn't do that - they set up a republic instead of a democracy.

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...)

Indeed... the whole point of representative democracy (or republic) is that one has a class of informed elected representatives of the citizens. These elected representatives think deeply about the issues at hand and construct coherent policies, something that a sequence of majority decisions are not necessarily able to achieve.

But what happens when the citizenry decide that our class of informed representatives no longer serve their interest? That these elected officials only care about election and taking money from lobbyists. That our president is...but I digress.

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.

> But what happens when the citizenry decide that our class of informed representatives no longer serve their interest?

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.

> Change them; if the electoral system isn't very good at that, probably fixing that is a more reasonable fix then abandoning representative democracy.

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.

> The US government was deliberately not set up to be a direct democracy.

It was also deliberately set up to permanently enshrine slavery and overrepresent slave owners.

> direct democracy was too prone to degenerate into mob rule

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.

> Do you think its possible that new advances in technology since 1776 might just enable direct democracy to avoid the degeneration you cite?

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.)

The problem will be the moderators and the internet trolls. What would happen when 4chan invades the US Senate and turns it into /r/the_Donald. Tumblr then takes over the House and every opposing opinion will be met with caps lock screaming, threats, and comments about OP's mom.

No, thank you. I'll stick with the mess we already have.

Don't we currently have this same problem in politics? It might just be me, but in recent times political attack ads seem to be increasing in occurrence while decreasing in taste. This looks like the same trolls, just a little more polite and with a better command of the English language.

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.

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