Author Topic: Voting on something real  (Read 2808 times)

headmount

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Voting on something real
« on: October 30, 2014, 07:46:50 PM »
I've always liked the proposition voting they have in California, something specific that you vote on, not a person who will speak politico and leave you disappointed.  Why not just do this all the way across the board?  We don't need senators and congressman in this age of the internet.  Representatives are elected on vague emotional bullshit ads and slogans.  They're usually not the best and brightest. 

Here in Hawaii for the first time in awhile there is proposition type vote of whether or not to enact a temporary moratorium on the use of GMOs.  It's a specific issue and we don't have to be flimfanned by some guy standing on the side of the road with a shit eating grin running for office.  We can vote on the specific issue.  Many people are feeling pretty jazzed to to be able to vote like this and I think it's the path to real democracy.

Talk about killing voter apathy.

SuppaTime

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2014, 09:44:38 PM »
Replacing the legislature with a proposition system is not workable. They consider 100's of bills every year and have large staffs and research resources to help sort it out. It is their full time job to do that. By and large the lay public does not have the time, resources, or inclination to devote to understanding each those 100's of items. So an across-the-board replacement is a bad idea, IMHO.

Even a system in which the most important bills are voted on my the public at large is risky. Take the current GMO initiative in Maui. Huge amounts of money is being spent to sway the voting public by Monsanto. How many of those voters are voting based on sound-bites rather than their own research? It is true that direct voting is probably the most democratic process but does it really produce the most logical/rational result?

I guess I am a little jaded but I tend to think voters vote on emotion more than anything else. It is why we ended up with the famous "Willy Horton" attack ads that doomed Dukakis many years ago, because it is so easy to sway votes by appealing to voters' emotions. I tend to think that it is easier to fix the problems in our legislative process with things like campaign finance reform than it is to train and educate  the voting public in how to rationally analyze and study each issue they are being asked to vote on.
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PonoBill

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2014, 10:06:25 PM »
Oregon is proposition central. It's government by the energetic but stupid. Like the magic quadrant graph--the good stuff is energetic and smart, smart but lazy is painless, stupid but lazy is also painless. but the energetic and stupid is a disaster. they ram propositions through.

sorry, that's just how it works in my experience.
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headmount

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #3 on: October 31, 2014, 01:49:31 AM »
Replacing the legislature with a proposition system is not workable. They consider 100's of bills every year and have large staffs and research resources to help sort it out. It is their full time job to do that. By and large the lay public does not have the time, resources, or inclination to devote to understanding each those 100's of items. So an across-the-board replacement is a bad idea, IMHO.

Even a system in which the most important bills are voted on my the public at large is risky. Take the current GMO initiative in Maui. Huge amounts of money is being spent to sway the voting public by Monsanto. How many of those voters are voting based on sound-bites rather than their own research? It is true that direct voting is probably the most democratic process but does it really produce the most logical/rational result?

I guess I am a little jaded but I tend to think voters vote on emotion more than anything else. It is why we ended up with the famous "Willy Horton" attack ads that doomed Dukakis many years ago, because it is so easy to sway votes by appealing to voters' emotions. I tend to think that it is easier to fix the problems in our legislative process with things like campaign finance reform than it is to train and educate  the voting public in how to rationally analyze and study each issue they are being asked to vote on.
You raised good points about the lay public not having time but campaign finance reform has gone in the opposite direction with the Supreme Court decision.  Spending is at an all time high.  We're farther from a fix than ever.

yugi

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2014, 08:06:45 AM »
Replacing the legislature with a proposition system is not workable. …

Well… actually it is. Just look to Switzerland for a 700 year old working example.

For someone living in a shit-eating-grin politician system this may blow your mind. Even more so that it works.

Here’s a little primer if you’re interested
http://direct-democracy.geschichte-schweiz.ch/

The result is politicians in Switzerland aren’t the shit-eating grin types but rather nerdy looking bureaucrats (that they are), and a President takes the bus to work. Along with a population that is well informed on all issues and thinks about the pros and cons of each decision - not just what would work for them in the short term.



I tend to think that it is easier to fix the problems in our legislative process with things like campaign finance reform than it is to train and educate  the voting public in how to rationally analyze and study each issue they are being asked to vote on.

Any change takes time. Yes, it is all about educating the public on what the impact of a vote would be. It’s part of the system and there’s a budget for it.

I figured Mark Twain would have had something to say about it in his (very funny) travel journals. Instead I found this quote via Wikileaks!

“(Switzerland is) a very successful but frequently frustrating alpine democracy.”
(Peter Coneway, former US Ambassador to Switzerland)

and, as usual, Orson Wells managed to sum it up perfectly:

“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
(Orson Welles)

PonoBill

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2014, 08:40:28 AM »
It would be a very long journey. Switzerland has always been a special case, and a fine example, but not really applicable. I can't imagine every American home with a military-age man having assault rifles and other military hardware in the hall closet. Works in Switzerland. IN NYC it would be the quick and the dead--mostly dead.

Most propositions are written by special interest groups with a hair across their butt about something. The propositions themselves are generally poorly thought out and abound with unintended consequences. I actually read the propositions and the associated analysis. It's a sad thing to do, like reading youtube comments.
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Tom

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2014, 09:47:30 AM »
Most propositions in California are created by large political and economical groups because they are the only ones that have the amount of money that is required to get them on the ballot and past. There are very few 'grass roots' propositions that ever get on the ballot. Also, there is no requirement that a bill is legal and constitutional or that it can be enforced. California passed a medical marijuana proposition several years ago and there is still many problems on how it can be implemented.

In a perfect world, legislatures would be elected to do a professional job of creating laws for the benefit of we the people. That doesn't work very well, but I think its better than what we have in California.

eastbound

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #7 on: October 31, 2014, 10:31:40 AM »
our democracy is for sale to the highest bidder at this point--completely shameful what has emerged with citizen's united, lobbying, etc

have an air sickness bag handy when you read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/us/lobbyists-bearing-gifts-pursue-attorneys-general.html?_r=0

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Re: Voting on something real
« Reply #8 on: November 05, 2014, 04:29:54 AM »
In the Maui Now news today:
==========================
Maui voters have voted to approve an initiative that places a moratorium on GMO cultivation in Maui County.

A total of 22,647 people vote YES in favor of the moratorium, representing 50% of the vote, while 21,807 people voted against the measure for a very close 48.1% of the vote
===========================================

Monsanto had been running TV ads claiming that if this initiative passes anyone with a garden will have to plow it under or face jail time.  If your wife waters a papaya tree she will be an accomplice to a felony etc...

It will be interesting to see if the sky falls.  Ha ha.  Assholes.  Get the hell off our island.  You and big cane need to exploit someone else.  Go try Liberia. 

 
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