Why I think most democratic voting systems are ineffective + A new voting method I think would make more sense

[Methamphetamine Mario]

Personally, I think the way most voting systems work;voting for a person or party in your ballot is very inefficient and are much at risk of bias due to things the candidates or parties say.

My suggestion for a new voting method would be to vote for the policies themselves and the candidates most aligned with those be your choice.

What do you guys think?

[HarryG]

Isn't that worse, because it removes the personal view of the voter where they determine for themselves if they think the candidate will actually follow through and stick to their policies? I see no upside to this, it just removes the connection between the voters and the candidates in politics which is an important part OF politics.

[Methamphetamine Mario]

You strike a very good point there but why I think the policy voting systems would work better is because I don't see many people where I live and internationally actually look into much of the policies and they base their choice more of who is more polarizing or relatable in the current time

[SHDW thealexander152]

No I don't really think it would be good because the whole reason for not doing a direct democracy is that it is too time consuming and massively inefficient for large populations, i.e. the US. Not to mention the amount of arguing and manipulation that would go into determining the algorithm.

[funkle]

opinions are like an asshole, everyone has one 

[Budi]

I'd rather start with something simple, at least for the US, if not globally. 

 

The suggestion Bernie Sanders made was spot on. Basically everybody should be automatically registered to vote, no bullshit hoops to jump through to get registered, which works in the elites favor. Secondly, election day should be a national holiday, so people can get out to vote and not have to worry about running to the polls after work or whatever else that might hang them up. 

[Broson]

A start to make the US democratic voting system actually work is to get rid of the electoral college nonsense. It's obsolete and way too susceptible to manipulation. It's bothersome when a candidate can get the majority vote from voters but still lose because the electoral college said so.

 

Though honestly I'd like to at least try a system where the politicians were removed entirely and some kind of voting system for new legislature kind of like change.org were implemented instead.

[Shining]

Well a savvy voter would make the policies of the candidate they're voting for top priority. The problem is that most people are not savvy voters and I think thats the biggest problem with Democracy. In my country, 70% of the voters are severely uneducated and dont even pay taxes. They have no idea who they are actually voting for, what they have done or what they stand for and those are the people who get to choose who runs the country. I think that's a problem everywhere you go, really.

 

We just had municipal elections and the current ruling party still won majority even though the president is an idiot and a convicted criminal. 

 

Also, you don't get a national holiday on voting day in the US?? That seems a bit ridiculous. 

[Hyperqube]

Personally, I think the way most voting systems work;voting for a person or party in your ballot is very inefficient and are much at risk of bias due to things the candidates or parties say.

My suggestion for a new voting method would be to vote for the policies themselves and the candidates most aligned with those be your choice.

What do you guys think?

 

I'm afraid that that's not going to work. Simplified: we all want more police, and we all want lesser taxes ... yet obviously someone will have to pay for the police force.

 

I would say that the core concept of a representative democracy is that you elect a man (or team) of which you say "OK - you're now appointed to make the plan" . This person then weighs pro's and cons, and decis what to do (more police but more taxes, or less taxes but less police, or status quo).

[silencedotmid]

I don't think that being biased towards what a politician says is a big issue - part of any politician's job is to be charismatic and appealing, but in the end it's still up to the voter to decide whether they were convinced or not.

There are many much larger issues, especially in US politics. There's voter suppression, political efficacy, gerrymandered political districts, and winner-takes-all systems that guarantee that political representation won't proportionally represent the beliefs of voters. I'd rather dissolve Congress and replace it with a parliamentary system then make people vote on policies instead of people.

[CapoFantasma97]

In my country, voting is quite ineffective for a series of key points:

•most of the population is purely ignorant on the matter. When they vote, they base it only on liking for instinct, not for solid reasons

•an heavy mistrust towards anything that involves politics. This makes so that a big part of the italians don't want to vote. An example was the latest referendum for an oil platform, where ⅓ of the entire population voted. The referendum of course became invalid and that oil platform is still here.

•lack of clarity when voting. There is a great number of parties, however many of them don't make serious advertizing, and anyway every party don't clearly dosplay their planned actions and reasons. Slogans are good for capturing the interest, but there must be more than a few nice words. For what I know, we have only one party that constantly promotes the use of internet and invites people to check their plans by going to their site

 

The first 2 points should be fixed right from school. There is a subject for that in middle school (you would translate something like "civic-mindedness education" or similar), however in reality very little to none is done in that sense.

By teaching clearly how our republic is composed of, and when the kid becomes a mature enough boy, the basics of our current way of how parties work, the different main objectives and stuff like that, potentially creates a new generation where people actually know what are they voting for and how it is important.

Plus, parties should become more transparent and clear on their plans and intentions.

What we need in this period of crisis, is a generation that knows what is doing, not new zombies for easy votes.

[=TNW= Maximus™]

This is the best version of voting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

[Gren]

Personally, I think the way most voting systems work;voting for a person or party in your ballot is very inefficient and are much at risk of bias due to things the candidates or parties say.

My suggestion for a new voting method would be to vote for the policies themselves and the candidates most aligned with those be your choice.

What do you guys think?

 

The biggest problem with that is that candidates rarely follow through on even a majority of their promises.  For that reason alone, I don't think it makes sense to vote on issues rather than candidates during an election. 

 

However, I'm definitely not opposed to holding more public referendums on major issues outside of the general election cycle.  There are examples where it works well (Switzerland) and examples where it doesn't (Italy).   The issue here is though, that you need a well informed public and politicians who would stay away from manipulating the public.  Both of those things are very hard to find in today's world.