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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a direct democracy at the federal level. there is no mechanism for it so we should stop pretending that there is.

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You don't need a direct democracy to reflect the will of the voters.

It would be disingenuous to claim that taking off shoes at the airport is the will of the people. Nobody voted for that. The public was never consulted.

But there are polls and the TSA has public support.

At the Local and State level - I don't understand why people don't get this - at the Federal level you have representation. The United States intent was to Unite the States on Federal/National issues - not local ones - the intent was to leave the states to rules at the state level, not make sure "everyone in the United States" is "doing the same thing".

And it's not even really a conservative view to say that. Even the most liberal of politicians would acknowledge that laws governing certain areas don't make sense everywhere, and there's a reason for keeping states, given the gigantic size of our country.

This comes up all the time in redistricting conversations; very often the goal for some of the strangers gerrymandered districts is to keep populations together.

People should have a say in how their day-to-day lives are governed, and not just be ruled by a huge cluster of people on a completely different part of the planet.

This has nothing to do with whether there could be a referendum mechanism or not.

Congress (and the rest of the federal government) can and does do all of the absurdities you are suggesting is prevented by the people having no direct say.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your reference to referendum.

It's by design that people have no direct say, however. That's a substantially worse system, by nearly every measurement, to generally employ.

Most people’s referendum concepts only make it a ballot based on a swell in support for the referendum to begin with. A decent threshold of the population needs to want any particular measure to begin with. So most things would be squashed.

In the same way that you don't need a mirror to reflect your appearance; a bowl of dirty water does just fine.

Direct democracy isn't the only way for voters to express their will. More than 60% of eligibile voters participated in the voting system last presidential election. Does a voting system that continues to be endorsed by a majority of the people not express their will?

Not defending direct democracy, but it's not clear that if 60% of eligible voters participate it entails A) the people endorse the voting system B) it expresses their will. You can waffle a little and say that if people hold their nose while voting they still are endorsing it and it expresses their will, but I don't think that's what I understand "the will of the people" to be. I prefer a punch the leg over a punch to the nose, but that doesn't mean I endorse being punched and that the leg punch expresses my will.

Participating in a system doesn't mean you endorse it. 40% of eligible voters not voting is much more worrisome....

California residents have an extremely low and practically irrelevant voting weight, for example.

I’m not here to debate why that is, I’m pointing out the stretch of the imagination involved to consider the outcome to reflect an aggregate voter will, versus basically accidents.

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