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Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by dangero on Thursday April 13, 2017 @12:23PM (#14108386)
Without runoff elections its always going to veer towards a two party system. It would work if we did two votes: vote first for who you want, then second vote for the best choice from top two.
Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by smokeyj on Thursday April 13, 2017 @12:48PM (#14108665)
Which leads to the next question. Why are we voting for a human at all? If members of an organization want a resolution passed anyone should be able to propose it - and if the magic threshold is met - then whala - the resolution is law.

I want to be able to vote everyday. I want to be able to pick who I want to represent my vote - and change it at will. I want to be able to pick Bill Gates to represent me on technology issues, and Sal Khan to represent me on education.

Government is just an organization, and an organization is a network. We should be using computer science terms to describe how we want this network to operate in terms of resolution, latency, redundancy, centralization/decentralization, upgrade protocls, failovers, and so on.

What I'm trying to say is.. Let's purge the politicians and put the people in charge.

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by nebabyte on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:21PM (#14109006)
> If members of an organization want a resolution passed anyone should be able to propose it - and if the magic threshold is met - then whala - the resolution is law.

...You just described the legislative branch. Direct democracy has its own problems; even if you scale for proportions of people, the people leading their everyday lives do not have the time to inform themselves en masse of particulars about issues, and thus would be readily swayed by false information. (As can already be seen with voting on ballot measures, which are a headache enough just being statewide)

And *viola

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by Spoom on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:50PM (#14109282)
Direct democracy tends to lead to tyrannies of the majority. I'd much prefer a multi-party system with some form of instant-runoff voting or mixed member proportional voting.

*voila, as the French: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/voil%C3%A0

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by vkou on Thursday April 13, 2017 @03:26PM (#14110170)
Representative democracy leads to tyrranies of the oligarchy. We don't need any more evidence for this.

I too, however, would prefer a run-off election.

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by pikzen on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:47PM (#14109249)
*voila.

Unless you really meant "raped", but for some reason I feel like this isn't it :^)

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by nebabyte on Thursday April 13, 2017 @09:12PM (#14112034)
Touché. Though at least I was closer than he was :)
Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by dangero on Thursday April 13, 2017 @12:51PM (#14108691)
I agree the replacement for current democracy is more technology based with provable transparency. Bitcoin's decentralized ledger breathes a lot of life into this concept.
Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by slededit on Thursday April 13, 2017 @04:30PM (#14110673)
Its actually more surprising regions haven't figured out they can create their own voting blocs and gain outsized influence. This happens in Canada with the Bloc Quebecois basically being Quebec's political party in Canada.

They trade votes on other things for concessions with Quebec. Scotland has done similar things.

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by veidr on Thursday April 13, 2017 @01:52PM (#14109311)
There's a brilliant, modern solution to this problem, and if the failed US democracy that I was born into can be fixed, I think this will be one of the cornerstones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

It's often called RCV (Ranked Choice Voting) because that's what it was dubbed in Maine, the only US state so far to approve a plan to implement it.

It rolls the runoff(s) into one vote, and leaves the drudgery to computers (could be done by schoolchildren manually, though, or whatever).

Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by nitrogen on Thursday April 13, 2017 @12:48PM (#14108668)
Seems approval voting would be easy and predictable based on http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
Re:Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter by ranger207 on Thursday April 13, 2017 @07:48PM (#14111718)
Interactive graphs based on that research: http://ncase.me/ballot/