Our democracy is broken. Why can't technology fix it?
engadget.com
engadget.com
Thinking back on civics lessons we had in high school, it’s sort of weird that we teach such a romanticized version of the history of democracy to kids. It’s a guaranteed recipe for disillusionment - no matter how good your government is, it can never match up to the idealized versions of historical figures. They’re not here for us to converse with, else we’d quickly learn they are just as flawed as anyone else.
It's sorry to say but the article reads like it was written by somebody without the slightest clue about how elections work.
Why? The electoral college is a pretty uniquely American institution, and Australia seem to manage OK with compulsory voting?
> Not to mention that the United States _is not_ a democracy
Well then how can they be a threat to the integrity of it?
The US could abolish the electoral college without replacing the first-past-the-post system (assuming by that you mean single-winner plurality voting): https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation
I'd like the US to both abolish the electoral college and adopt a different voting system for presidential elections. Actually, I consider the voting system used for the Australian House of Representatives more suitable for presidential elections than for parliamentary elections.
That's not an important distinction - it's misguided pedantry. The US is a republic and a (representative) democracy. Those terms are not mutually exclusive.
A republic is a system where each head of state is chosen by the people in some form, not necessarily by voting (res - of, publica - public). Contrast with Monarchy.
A Democracy is a system where the goverment's decision process is based on the population that it serves (demo - the people as in "demographics", cratia - to govern), this is determined by voting so decisions can be made according to the majority. In the particular case of modern democracies, because of the unyieldiness of having the whole population vote on every measure, we use what's called a representative democracy, where we choose someone to represent via voting us when deciding something. Contrast with dictatorship.
On the other hand, we need to look no further than gerrymandering to see that something has gone wrong.
Furthermore, we are barely a two-party system. We get to vote. What's lacking is choice.
The Fourth Estate is also in a troubling state. Unfortunately, they're not going to report that about themselves.
Finally. Let's not forget the power and influence of lobbyist.
It's hard to imagine Jefferson saying, "Yes. This is it. Great job."
That being said, we need a healthy dose of principles that safeguard liberty, and the determination to hold elected officials to them.
As a start, I'd like to suggest we stop using the word leader / leadership when - as your so accurately noted - they are elected officials. Some do lead. But leader is a title that should be reserved for those who actually do.
We've been duped into believing they are all leaders. They are not. We haven't even left the gate and already the first step is wrong.
1. Majority for Liberal government 2. Majority for Conservative government 3. Minority for Liberal government 4. Minority for Conservative government 5+ Majority/minority for any of the various other parties (NDP, Green, etc.) <- doesn't really happen federally, but provincially it's definitely possible
The downside in Canada is that our appointed Senate is weak compared to an elected one, and you can whip your party to vote along certain lines.
Most people pick candidates based on how well they do in debates or based purely on superficial qualities. Oh look, Obama looks stunning today, let's vote for him. Or look, Hillary is a woman, let's vote for her. The amount of effort on this is zero, which is also exactly what we actually want.
The system also makes sure no real suitable candidates have a chance. They need to be rich, first of all. Second, they need media support (media is owned by a handful of people, so they decide who gets to look good and who doesn't). Third, there are powerful people at the top who can make people catch a bullet (Reagan, Martin Luther King, etc). Fourth, there is actually a real illuminati group of people who already decides the direction of the world and what is needed to keep people distracted.
No group of humans is smart enough to decide the direction of the world. It's an emergent phenomenon from billions of actors.
Wouldn't it be nice if there actually were real Illuminati managing the world? At least someone would have some control over what's happening, hopefully someone with a clue.
If they were never taught the ideal, or worse, told that the way things work now is how its always been, would we rob ourselves of any opposing societal force beyond armed insurrection that could improve things?
Also, many countries that call themselves democracies actually aren't. There are very few actual democracies, the only country that really manages to cross the line for me is Switzerland, it is also the only country where the citizens will associate themselves with the decisions taken by the government in conversation as in 'we decided that' rather than 'the government decided that'. That's the first and only time I've come across that phenomenon, everywhere else the government is seen as a force outside of control of 'ordinary people' even if they nominally have the vote and the power.
This is partly why attempts to airdrop democracy into other countries have gone wrong. You can't just set up ballot boxes and hope the rest of the system coalesces around them.
Another lesson that might be learned from overseas "democracy promotion" is that nothing turns a democracy into a failed state quicker than ethnically-fragmented voting.
Two times in my lifetime a presidential canidate has had the majority of the votes, and still "lost" the election.
Most people ive talked to have agreed that often laws get passed by paying corrupt gov officials. People just kind of accept it.
I agree with you that auditable systems are not going to bring the change to democracy that this country needs. This system needs some fundemental changes.
But electronic voting, at least right now, doesn't solve any of the difficult problems. I think we as "the technological elite", in many ways, need to be responsible with what our hammer makes us see as nails.
A perfect electronic voting system would make the current system more efficient and likely increase participation, at least somewhat, but it wouldn't fix any of the real problems, and we don't have a perfect electronic voting system _anyway_.
But it will never happen and this is by design. The history of America is not the history of empowering people through democracy. It the history of the powerful working very carefully to ensure that only their votes count and only their voices are heard. Even today it is extremely rare to hear important politicians talk about how to make it easier for people to vote, instead all you hear about are the need for voter IDs as the solution to the completely non existent problem of voter fraud. All of these major initiatives to disenfranchise the citizens going back to the very beginning of the republic are now paying big dividends. Academic analysis of the American system has shown time and again the government works only for the wealthy.
Trump isn't a "fringe element" - he's pure GOP, just saying the bad parts out loud.
He has all the support of key groups, such as evangelicals: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/383886-poll-white...
This is why the US is so messed up. It's also why democracy falls short of its promise in general. People don't care about policy on a large scale. People care about their tribe. Tribes are regional. Red and Blue states have remained largely the same for decades, if not centuries [1].
Ultimately, democracy is a very low resolution census.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-see...
Much of the problems of the US are due to people playing up divisions for party advantage. There's only so far that can go before there's blood in the streets.
To the extent that they're not an illusion, the red and blue states might be the result of a voting system that inhibits third parties and promotes hyper-partisanship.
What's wrong with government "increasing" as society becomes more specialized and complicated?
And not everyone thinks that way, so it's not a place to "start" when talking about democracy.
[1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
I agree in the larger sense though. In my opinion, the only way to stop a corrupt government is to shrink it.
We have had democracy (and far more extensive -- to those participating in it at least) before we had electricity.
As far as solving the problem, maybe we should look at how we count votes. The way it is done know tend to polarize opinions. Maybe something that would average them like Range Voting [0] would be better. That way trying to win election is more about being fit for the majority rather than trying isolate a majority of people. Gerrymandering would become a lot more difficult as people can vote, to a varying degree, for or against you.
The districts only change every 10 years. The motivation is to keep the variation in population between the districts low.
For states, they each get to decide how to structure their own government. Many do have 2 houses. Here the upper house is elected from larger districts than the lower house, but each member represents 1 district.
In a civilization that has shown time and time again politicians are most often in bed with corporations and not with their electorate, why are we not using smart contracts for that? Why is it we are not using machine learning to find out when judges apply different sentences for the same crime depending on whether the accused is black or white, something pretty common in my country?
Since I first understood how deep learning works, I've been puzzled by the lack of verification we could be doing in order to mathematically detect corruption, injustice, prejudice, racism, hatred. All the tools are there, yet our laws and elections conveniently ignore those technologies and we're stuck in a system where we have to trust trust. What is so inherently good with the current system that we ditch mathematics, our most basic objective language and keep on using a system based on lies, promises that never come to happen and lobbying? There's something clearly rotten with the current concept of "democracy" being used in this planet yet the only tools which can fix it are ignored.
- easier to commit voting fraud
- no paper trail to audit
- further dis-enfranchisement of the poor
- no way to check if votes aren't done under pressure
- harder to verify votes aren't bought
In order to "mathematically detect corruption, injustice, prejudice, racism, hatred", you need actionable metrics to create the model to begin with, and be sure that those aren't biased or incomplete.
Occupational blindness seems very recurring in tech. Just because a system can be built to solve a problem doesn't mean the system you end up building will.
I'm afraid not. There are real limits (physical and otherwise) to what can be calculated.
The problem in short is that the people in power and quite a lot of those supporters don't want those problems detected.
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2011/summary_summary.ht...
#voteinpeace
The poor today would be better off living in small remote communities away from civilization. It's in the interest of the rich to make sure that the poor remain addicted to the system even though it works against them.
That's why drugs have become such a problem. With drugs you can keep extracting value from the poor way past the point of 'would be better off living in the forest'.