Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Many people agree that there are many problems with first past the post voting. IMO, that's an artefact of voting districts. With modern technology, it's possible to make our representative democracy truly representative.

During an election, you give your proxy to anybody who is willing to be a representative. Each representative votes in Congress with a vote weighted by the number of proxies they received. The top 500 or so representatives get to sit in Congress. Those who didn't reach the threshold must pass their proxy on to another.

Nobody is no longer "represented" by somebody they didn't vote for. You can be represented by somebody who much more closely matches your interest. "Districts" will still be represented because many people will choose a local candidate, but everybody is free to choose someone who will represent them better if no local candidate does.

This won't eliminate political parties, but it will significantly weaken them as strong representatives will no longer be as dependent on the party machinery.

I'm curious: is there any otherwise "fair" voting system that is less representative than "first past the post voting"?

It's obvious it was chose for the US because they had ZERO knowledge of game theory and it was the best they could come up with at the time.

But given that we now know how to do representative democracy that's actually, you know, representative, it does make me wonder if the US is actually provably using the worst "fair" voting system we actually know how to build.

And if it is, you'd think it'd be possible to get the states to pass a constitutional amendment changing it (which would then go to congress – yes, it's in reverse, but the two-party system will NEVER vote themselves out without an overwhelming public display of opinion on the matter, IMO).

The problem with the game theory's ideas on voting is that people do not always behave as game theory predicts.

Free will is great way to avoid stagnation if we were to but use it.

I like your idea, but given that the technology is in reach: why not just get rid of representation entirely? We need a method for generating new law proposals and then just people vote directly on those from their own homes rather than voting for some person who may or may not vote for you in the way they claim they will.

We'd have to pretty much tear up the Constitution, but I like the idea.

Why even have representatives, just let everyone vote on every issue directly via their Hacker News login?

Ever heard how they do it in Switzerland? They have several national referenda each year, directly voting on issues of federal importance.

I'm afraid this works well only due to the small size of the country. OTOH their democracy is 800+ years old. Modern technology could scale popular voting to larger populations.

That's a pretty interesting idea. Is there any precedent for anything remotely resembling this having been done before?

I believe the Pirate Party (possibly only in Germany) uses it. It's called liquid democracy.

Liquid Democracy is basically direct democracy with a flexible proxy capability. My proposal is proxy only.

Liquid Democracy also does away with fixed election dates and embraces a continuous process. I deliberately didn't talk about that in my proposal. I think too many people get hung up on the continuous process part, which I think is much less important than proxy voting combined with the removal of districting.

IOW, my proposal is a toned down version of Liquid Democracy.

Interesting idea.

I prefer approval voting, which is very easy to administrate.

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