True Democracy

The idea of everyone getting to vote on every policy decision is not new, but it does have significant hurdles:

Deciding which issues get voted on
Will the public be informed enough to make decisions?
Can the public make necessary hard choices?
How many people will be bothered to vote?

Which Issues?

The easiest way would be to remove policy decisions from public votes if they are related to the budget, military and trade. The government could still use non-binding votes to get a feel for what the public wants, and then respond with reasons why they might take a different path.

The first issues voted on could be restricted to society – like legalising marijuana, or gay marriage, or euthanasia. These are all issues that where the policy can be reversed if the public decides they made a mistake.

Being Informed

Although the idea of a true democracy undermines the current system of political parties and MPs, we will need the major parties to present information about issues from their point of view. Deciding who else gets to have their views aired to the public through an official channel is difficult. I suggest a state-run organisation that has the job of discovering the different points of view and presenting them in an un-biased way. It might sound impossible, but we already have state-owned media that is essentially doing this already.

We could also have information parties, which have registered members. If you have enough members, your point-of-view can be made public through an official channel.

Before voting, voters must acknowledge that they have made an effort to be informed, and alongside that form will be links to the information.

Hard Choices

We can’t have the public making decisions where the heart might be in the right place but reality is different. (In my opinion) the clampdown on illegal boat arrivals was very successful, but it might not have happened if a public vote was involved.

Also, the public are more likely to vote for increased or decreased spending on matters that directly affect them in obvious ways (taxes, health, welfare), but not understand the importance of spending on infrastructure or defence.

As said above, the government can seek non-binding views from the public, and then explain why they go against them. But that could be very difficult.

How Many People Will Actually Vote?

There will be issues that the public aren’t interested in, and voter turnout will be low. I feel a 50% turnout would be a requirement for a decision to be valid.

An Australian concept called Voter Flux has the answer. It is a blockchain based voting system with some very sound principles and should be used by the government anyway. But the key innovation is that voters get to pass their vote over to someone they trust and who actually cares about the issue at hand. That could be a politician, an academic, a public figure, the head of an organisation or anyone at all.

If issues could be categorised, then a voter could decide that if they fail to vote themselves, their default thought leader for that category would carry the vote for them.

The ability to rescind the vote transfer should be available retrospectively in case the thought leader votes differently than what they had told the public.

Yes, personal votes will be private, but those who have gifted votes might have to have who they voted stored somehow.

Age Scale

It is undeniable that the votes of a young person will provide them with greater lifetime value than the vote of an elderly person. Sorry to put this so bluntly, but someone who is 85 years old and has 3 years left to live, voting, say, against gay marriage, experiences relatively less angst in their few years left, than someone with 60+ years ahead of them would have if the vote went against them. We should explore the concept that the years you will experience something negative to your beliefs, should be relative to the perhaps few years someone gets to experience the positive for them