[pp.int.general] Agora Voting System for a Liquid Democracy at FOSDEM

[Boris Turovskiy]

Hi Eduardo,
> Exactly -  except you would need a law to accept robots in parliament
> first ;-) PDI's idea is: we need to change no law to make direct
> democracy start to happen in Spain. We need people to vote us, though.
Actually, I can pinpoint the logical flaw in your construction (and the
reason why it both doesn't bring direct democracy any closer and has
little chance of success in a parliamentary system): While it is
reasonable to assume that a parliament (or any other elected body) in
its entirety should represent the citizens' opinion, this is wrong with
respect to sub-entities of the parliament (say, parties). The
representation of the people by the parliament is based on the fact that
there are different interests present in a society, and that the bearers
of those interests may be in conflict with one another; the vox populi
is produced when representatives of all sides (with corresponding
weights) sit in parliament and have to balance the interests of their
respective voters.
Now, that system could possibly be replaced by direct democracy as a
whole, but not at the level of a single party, because in this case, the
party represents literally nobody. If I am against internet censorship,
or ACTA, or anything else and I have a vote, I want that vote to go to
someone of whom I can be sure that he's on my side. There are enough
forces (and parties) who are not on my side, I'm not going to elect
anyone who'll possibly strengthen them even more.

Best regards,
Boris