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

[Eduardo Robles Elvira]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 12:50 AM, Boris Turovskiy <tourovski at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Okey I'll bite :P

The idea of a proxy party like PDI is simply a hack to the political
system. We know you cannot start but directly changing the system to
be a liquid democracy: we need instead a gradual change. And that's
the only and best approach we found. It's the way you bootstrap: in
the end, PDI won't be necessary and if liquid democracy is made law,
then PDI will cease to exist, and we are aware of that from the very
begining.




On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 1:25 AM, Boris Turovskiy <tourovski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That's the point I don't see happening, as it'll be more a live-demo of
> a party being elected for certain policy positions and doing the
> opposite (at least part of the time) - I can't see that suiting the
> voters very well...

It's a metaparty, asume that. It will start borrowing votes from big
parties, because when you have only 2 or 3 members in the parliament
minorities won't have a good representation in the liquid votings. The
good thing is that you can tell people: instead of voting to X or Y
(being those the two/three/N biggest parties), you can just vote for
the Internet's Party, then just delegate your vote in X or Y or
whatever you want. BUT if they start doing things you don't share, you
don't need to go to a demonstration or a strike: just change your vote
delegation and it will be even more effective! Shit just got real :-P.

>> Election after election you will win more voters, willing to get more
>> real democracy, and the simple statistical analysis of the difference of
>> vote between you and the rest of the parliament will make it even more
>> clear that the other parties don't defend your interests.
> "Your"? (hypothetic now) The Conservatives mostly defend the interests
> of Conservative voters (e.g. try to censor the internet and kick out all
> immigrants). The socialists defend the interests of their voters (e.g.
> fight for higher social security). With the PDI the only thing you can
> be sure of that you have a shot at influencing their votes at every step
> - but if the voter herself _does_ already have positions and priorities,
> why take such a risk?
>
> Maybe I don't see something big or am too engrossed in the current
> parliamentary system, as arguments like yours come regularly from Liquid
> Democracy advocates in the German Pirate Party, too - but I can't see a
> party having any success with this chameleon approach.

As I said, I think that the key the idea is not to be a chameleon with
small parties at the begining becuase that won't be possible. The idea
is that you should borrow the votes from the big parties. And of
course also from the biggest party: non-participation. So that people
can believe again in democracy.

Regards,
   Eduardo.