UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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I feel like I remember reading about a hypothesised digital voting system where every voter can either vote for themselves, or pass their vote to a representative, that can in turn pass their own and any collected votes to another representative. But each voter can withdraw their vote from a representative at any time.
So you could still have a representative body, which I think is important for getting work done. But citizens are far more empowered; if you disagree with your elected representative over a particular issue, you can rescind your vote from them temporarily and vote directly on the issue yourself.
I like the idea of this, although there'd need to be a robust verification system in place to make sure people aren't being bullied into passing their votes off to others.
I think it'd generally lead to people being more engaged and politically literate, though. And it could even lead to individuals bargaining with people they know. Like, I could say to my neighbour, "hey, I'll vote your way on this policy that I'm indifferent about if you vote my way on this other policy".
I do wonder how much of an issue disinformation campaigns would be under such a system. Would it increase their influence? Would hate rags like the Daily Mail find themselves with more influence? Or would people start to cotton onto the fact that nothing they suggest improves anything?
Absolutely it would, just look how Cambridge Analytica influenced the Brexit vote, it was basically brainwashing. But that's happened now, it's history and could be taught in schools if it hadn't been swept under the rug...
But that's the thing, "Western Democracy" could flourish because we would have all the debates on the public forums with the outside interference from other states and our own propaganda campaigns going too.
It would still be Politics, but with less Politicians.
My first thought was of thousands of people mindlessly giving their votes to their favorite celebrity, and how horribly that could go.