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And this is the sort of legislation that should be passed by direct referendum, will of the people, and not by representatives who have been bought out by special interest groups. Desperately needed but unlikely to happen.
the country would function so much better if we just sent out ballots to everyone to vote on every bill if they want to
That's how Brexit happened in the UK.
I agree about not trusting the politicians, but not sure I trust the general public much more unfortunately.
Just look at your presidential race, sadly I agree
Bad example, Trump lost the popular vote both times. Dang electoral college was responsible for that travesty. Also George W. Bush lost the popular vote in his first election too. Thanks again, electoral college.
People voted for him, those people are fucking brain dead
I don't disagree, just saying it's an instance where direct democracy would have been better than having this representative layer of the electoral college in between.
Well we're on the same page now
I non-sarcastically love your optimism. But part of me really believes that 50% of the country votes however their church tells them to. So I'm not sure it'd be better.
Johnson should have teeth.
Mine doesn't have a mouth though, just a small opening
It's more like one fourth. Half the country doesn't vote at all.
I would be very careful with that. US should try having a more representative government first.
You'd get people voting for all the projects and none of the budget.
You are getting down voted for telling the truth.
It happens. I'm not concerned about it. I've seen that happen first-hand. If people don't want to acknowledge it, they can learn it for themselves.
So long as you don't like a functioning economy, sure.
Stupid take. Nobody thinks rote popularity contest is a good idea. There's too much to know. Too much to regulate. Have to employ experts.
If it were left to popular vote, do you think we would have the Exclusionary Rule? A ban on cruel and unusual punishment? A right to remain silent? Any criminal rights?
Any minority rights at all?
So just vote for the issues that matter to you.
Either way, you get more control than having someone else make the decisions for you.
"Abstain from votes you feel unqualified for while the unqualified radicalized masses vote every time" isn't exactly the winning strategy either. Fact is a large portion of the population has no problem voting incompetently and/or under the influence of malicious talking heads.
I don't see why you think the constituency would routinely make worse decisions than the people they put in power.
What makes you think politicians are exempt from this?
Honestly how old are you?
We have frequent ballot measures in California and as a voter I do a lot of work to understand those ballot measures that many do not have the time or the ability to do. California ballots may have 5-10 questions on them, and these things already take a long time to properly research and understand...Can you imagine the complexity when you're talking about national issues and especially thinking of running the entire government that way?
It's a full-time job. There's no way it's scalable to run a country this large with this many competing interests using direct voting. You'd spend your whole life voting on or researching on voting on things.
Ultimately, you'd wind up with industry writing all of the law proposals and a misrepresented version of those coming across some kind of voting device. We'd still continue our slow slide into some sort of industrial feudalism, just without the politicians to blame for it.
I think proportional representation and ranked choice voting are both better ideas.
How is anything I've posted negated by the fact that corruption exists?