"You voted for me to represent you! Now I will not do that!" would, in any reasonable system, be grounds for dismissal. And is, in many countries. Come on New York, you can change this.

This is a bit silly. Right-to-repair (and to be clear, I'm all for it) wasn't on the NY ballot. There wasn't a referendum, it wasn't anyone's key campaign issue, etc. Dismissing representatives for a vote on any one issue would pretty quickly leave us with zero.

(As the edit to the article indicates, the bill isn't subject to a pocket veto, either.)

> This is a bit silly.

It's not. The kind of behaviour being discussed is corruption. It wouldn't be dismissing representatives for a vote on any one issue; it would be dismissing representatives for corruption. But the electorate prefers to re-elect corrupt politicians as long as the corruption is in their favor, so the behaviour continues.

It's not inherently corrupt for a representative to vote in a way that's not a perfect representation of their constituents' opinion polling.

There's no allegation that the Governor has been bribed, the bill becomes law soon even if she doesn't sign it, and it's only been on her desk for two business days.

> It's not inherently corrupt for a representative to vote in a way that's not a perfect representation of their constituents' opinion polling.

That's not what we're discussing. Up-thread, I responded to:

"...paid-off politicians who act on behalf of a few oligarchs to block popular policy changes".

That behavior, if it is happening, is what I'm claiming is corruption, even that kind of behaviour is the norm nowadays, and voters don't vote this kind of corruption out, or even call it out as corruption.

> There's no allegation that the Governor has been bribed...

Correct. The allegation is as I quoted above. It is not my allegation; I'm merely discussing appropriate voting behaviour if it were true.

> ...it's only been on her desk for two business days.

Not according to the article:

"A spokesperson for the governor's office told VICE's Motherboard on October 31 that "Governor Hochul is reviewing the legislation." Asked about the bill's status today by Ars Technica, a spokesperson responded that "Governor Hochul is reviewing the legislation."

I'd advise reading the entire article.

> The bill was delivered to the governor Friday, according to the New York Senate's bill tracker, though she has been considering it since late June.

What is the general sense being expressed to them currently? It's there any effort made to see how the average person in their district feels about the issue? What about those who have an opinion?

That's what representation means. It isn't intended to end when ballots are counted.

People can contact their representatives. Each representative has a paid staff to accommodate the scale of that communication.

If you can show that the average consistuent in a district has a shared opinion, and that opinion is being overruled by their representative, then you have illustrated the failure of representation.

If you can show a pattern where the opinions of a minority group are being chosen over an opinionated majority, then you have illustrated the corruption of that representative.

> What is the general sense being expressed to them currently?

On right-to-repair, from their constituiencies? Likely nothing. I'm an avid consumer of news, including local, and there's been very little coverage of it.

> If you can show that the average consistuent in a district has a shared opinion, and that opinion is being overruled by their representative, then you have illustrated the failure of representation.

Nah. Politics is complicated and full of compromise; sometimes you give in on one battle to win another.

> If you can show a pattern where the opinions of a minority group are being chosen over an opinionated majority, then you have illustrated the corruption of that representative.

Or a pattern of upholding minority rights, a core component of our Constitution.

> Dismissing representatives for a vote on any one issue would pretty quickly leave us with zero.

Good.

For about five minutes.

There tend to be downsides of political systems that don't have elected representatives.

Electing ourselves into a power vacuum.

Oh I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood what an almost unanimous vote to pass by the New York legislature means? This person was not elected to ignore the state senate, no matter who you voted for. Their job is to ratify bills that passed the house, not to let them die for the lulz

> Their job is to ratify bills that passed the house, not to let them die for the lulz

Uh, no. That’s an absurd assertion. The Governor is another branch, that exists as a check and balance on the legislature. That’s why they have the veto power.

The gov was just as voted-in as the rest of them, too. The will of the voters in both branches.

Yes. However, this is after the fact when the damage is already done. Referendums allow people to directly change decisions that public disagrees with and force the representatives to obey the outcome. They are as democratic as it gets - direct will of the people.

Of course, propaganda is still a powerful enemy, but at least people have a chance to win against rich lobbies.

If we were serious about politicians actually representing the will of the residents in their district people it would be way more accurate if policy and votes were based on a public statistical analysis sanity checked only by "is what the people want actually doable."

But we're not. We don't vote for politicians to represent people faithfully, we vote for politicians to represent our interests in a much more abstract sense.

This is the governor, not a district member. They are elected, by the entire state, to represent the entire state in federal context. Whether you voted for them or not, they still represent you and one of their jobs is to sign bills passed by the house. If they don't do that, they should get fired.

People don't vote on representatives. People (en masse) vote along party lines or on name/ideology recognition.

It has been well noted that this reduces to advertising budget, which lays bare the farce that is democracy. If it weren't a direct mapping from money to power, we wouldn't need campaign finance laws.

You can't change this because this is the way the system was designed to work. It is a system for legitimizing the authority of those with money and power using the branding of "the will of the people".

Funny how the people's will always lines up with the interests of the largest corporations, employers, and landowners, despite their being a tiny minority of "the people".

While it is accurate that most people vote on party basis, it is straightforwardly not the case that advertising budgets dictate campaign victories, especially in the larger, more visible races.

You can't blame people for voting on "party line" when there are only two parties to vote on. That's a problem we can't solve, so let's not shame folks for dealing with it.

But here's the fun part: it doesn't matter who voted for the governor: once voted, the represent everyone in the state of New York, irrespective of who they voted for. When the house votes, almost unanimously to pass a bill, the governor's job is to sign it, not to stare at the wall picking their nose while checking their bank account on their phone every few minutes.

> When the house votes, almost unanimously to pass a bill, the governor's job is to sign it

Which is why the pocket veto exists. If the governor doesn't sign it or veto it, it becomes law. 10 days is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, considering it took the legislature from Feb 2nd to Dec 16th to deliver it to the Governor - 317 days. If 10 days is that important, then we should be more concerned about the 317 days.

No, we should also be concerned about the 317 days, and the state should fire said governor for refusing to do their job.

I don't like the NY governor (for a whole list of reasons), but not signing a bill and pocket vetoing it - if that's wants she wants to do - is not her "refusing to do her job". It's fully defined as something she can do by their constitution. If you don't like that, campaign for a NY State constitutional amendment to reduce the time period of a pocket veto.

You may want her to eagerly sign it - fine, vote against her in her primaries or the general election if it's that important to you. But her replacement will probably will also do something you don't like at some point. No one is ever 100% perfectly represented, especially by a governor or president.

This is an old topic in the political philosophy of representative democracies: is a representative supposed to just do whatever the most popular sentiment is? Or are they supposed to use their best judgement—given they, presumably, spend more time looking into and thinking about various issues, and have access to better experts and advisors than most members of the general public—even when that's sharply counter to public sentiment? Somewhere in between? Where does the line fall?

I expect the representatives to represent my interest and make a judgement. I don't expect them to do just exactly what I would have done. When a potential law is drafted and works through the process to become law, it goes through bargaining between legislators.

If the legislators shirk their duties, it is to the extent that they are avoiding unpopularity by redelegating back to me, and I always vote no on referenda unless there is a huge factor of conscience. Which happens apparently once a decade or so.

Direct referenda solve this particular problem, but create other conflicts:

Referendum 1: the State shall not raise taxes in any way without a vote of the people.

Referendum 2: the State shall fully fund the education of children living in the State

Referendum 2 sounds a little like a vote of the people to raise taxes.

It isn't, though, and in fact often such referendums can't be funded through taxes because of referendums like the other one in the comment you responded to. So what happens is other programs suffer.

AFAICT, that's the point.

That's only a problem if you can't cut other services.

like brexit?

you will be surprised what would happen if USA switches to direct democracy

The result of Brexit referenda can be attributed to caging away citizens from a democratic decision-making process on the things that matter. It was a vote of contempt not on the matter. If more referenda were held, the contempt for the lack of democracy would fade away as it's in Switzerland.

Just what we need. More spite votes until the system somehow magically fixes itself.

>The result of Brexit referenda can be attributed to caging away citizens from a democratic decision-making process on the things that matter.

To be fair, the EU is partially responsible for that. Even if the UK had a form of direct democracy, EU rules would still dictate on many issues. Switzerland can only do what it does because it isn't part of the EU.

(Now, if the EU itself had a direct democracy (setting aside the practical issues with that) it would perhaps be different.)

I agree that the EU has contributed to outlawing democracy on several issues and has replaced it with bureaucracy. Like a silly thing where the city can't directly manage parking fees and needs to instantiate an independent profit-seeking business for that.

However, now after Brexit UK now opened itself to profit-seeking international relations which can be worse than EU-dictated bureaucracy.

Many states have referendum style systems, such as California.

Heck, a county voted to split from California. That won't happen though.

And those systems have created some massive problems. Prop 13 is one of the worst laws in the country, but the state is unable to fix it.

Actually, Prop 13 has millions of proponents and polls suggest that most are appear to be fully aware of the consequences.

https://projects.scpr.org/prop-13/history/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+popular+is+prop+13+in+ca...

Obviously if people didn't support it then it would be repealed. That doesn't make it a good law. It is directly responsible for the housing affordability crisis in california. That's good for homeowners so they won't repeal it, but it's very bad for the state and everyone else. Which is the whole point here, direct democracy leads to 51% of the population shafting the other 49%.

> That's good for homeowners so they won't repeal it, but it's very bad for the state and everyone else.

Homeowners are a big part of the state. "everyone else" must be a small minority. If you think it is a big enough part of the population, feel free to bring a prop to repeal prop 13. My bet is that any attempt to repeal it will lose in a landslide based on what happened in 2020[1] when they attempted a partial repeal.

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_15,_Tax_on_Co...

> Which is the whole point here, direct democracy leads to 51% of the population shafting the other 49%.

Notice that prop 15 lost by 4%... It is not good for the state as a whole, but it is good for the 52% of the voters that own a home. So now 48% of the state and everyone that wants to move to california is fucked because 9 million people want their home value to keep increasing.

If 52% of people in alabama wanted to bring back slavery should they do it?

> Notice that prop 15 lost by 4%

And it targeted only commercial and industrial properties, with proceeds going to education and local govt funding. That is, as sympathetic setup as it could be. It didn't touch any residential homes, neither primary nor secondary nor rentals. And it still lost.

> it is good for the 52% of the voters that own a home

It seems you didn't read what prop 15 was about. If it included homes, the vote against it would have been much higher than 52%.

Prop 15 failed because people were worried that if it passed prop 13 would be repealed next election. It had nothing to do with people wanting commercial properties to have tax breaks and everything to do with signaling how devoted the voters are to prop 13.

> If it included homes, the vote against it would have been much higher than 52%.

Source?

No matter though. Even if 70% of voters support prop 13 it's still the wrong policy in the exact same way 70% support for enslaving minorities is. Laws that exist solely to siphon money from poor people to rich people are bad. Doubly so when they destroy economic value to the extent prop 13 does.

> Source?

https://www.ppic.org/blog/who-likes-proposition-13/ (at least until 2014, ~65% Californians think prop 13 is a good thing, similar to original support levels in 1978).

> No matter though. Even if 70% of voters support prop 13

Moving goalposts now? Upthread, you were talking about 51% shafting 49% and that was a pure hyperbole which I called out. Prop 13 support is much more massive (more like 63-27 per my citation above).

> exact same way 70% support for enslaving minorities is

Nope. Enslaving someone is forbidden under the US constitution and personal freedom is recognized as a basic right, backed by the full force of the state. Prop 13 merely affects prices in some small areas of a giant state and there is no constitutional right to "own a home in the most expensive area of the country".

Again, comparing that to slavery is another hyperbole meant to evoke emotions?

> comparing that to slavery is another hyperbole meant to evoke emotions?

I really don't think it is. Prop 13 turns non homeowners into wage slaves. It makes housing prohibitively expensive. It is a deeply unjust law. I'm not trying to make some case about the legality of forcing non homeowners to pay exorbitant amounts for housing, I'm saying it's morally and in many ways economically comparable to slavery, or at least serfdom.

I don't really think I ever moved the goalposts. My take was always that direct democracy leads to the majority shafting the minority and that's exactly what prop 13 does. It doesn't matter that the majority supports enriching themselves by taking money from the minority, it's a bad law for the state because it destroys economic value and is obviously unjust.

> I really don't think it is. Prop 13 turns non homeowners into wage slaves...It makes housing prohibitively expensive.

Barring a few pockets, housing is cheap even in California. Now, if your claim is that everyone who wants to should be able to afford a home in SF or Palo Alto, then that is something else.

> majority supports enriching themselves by taking money from the minority

How is majority taking money from minority in this case?

Democrats regularly win the popular vote so we would have avoided trump and bush at least

You can't judge the outcome of elections by standards under which they were not held. Popular-vote-wins would result in very different campaign efforts, and different voting patterns.

It's like holding a baseball game and then, after the fact, declaring that the winner isn't the team with the most runs, but the one that got the most hits. Sure there's some correlation there, but both teams would have played differently if they'd known that's how they'd be judged, so you can't be sure who would have won if they'd known that's how they were supposed to be playing.

I think Brexit can also be seen as an argument for more direct democracy: if there had been a referendum in the UK on one or more of the major changes in the EU treaties in the previous 25 years, I think it's likely that Brexit wouldn't have happened, or else that it would have happened much earlier with less damage as a result.

Brexit wasn't based on actual harm caused by EU treaties. It was caused by bigotry, fear over economic issues being very deliberately misdirected due to propaganda, and a host of outright lies on the part of the Leave campaign.

I see you're getting downvoted, but as an American who followed the whole mess remotely, that sounds about right to me. The only thing I'd add was that I think it started as intra-party infighting and political dramatics that got wildly out of control.

Speaking as a Californian, where our ballot is always filled with propositions [1] [2], I can confidently say this is a bad idea. I think it works tolerably well for issues that are something an average citizen can understand with a little research, but otherwise just ends up as dueling propaganda campaigns.

For example, this year San Francisco voted to decide whether one of the major streets through Golden Gate Park should remain mostly car free after we tried that for the pandemic. That seems like a fine use. But there was a state prop titled "REQUIRES ON-SITE LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AT KIDNEY DIALYSIS CLINICS AND ESTABLISHES OTHER STATE REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE STATUTE." This was some sort of high-dollar fight among vested interests fought via sketchy ballot proposition and it absolutely should not have been on the ballot.

(You also can quickly run into tyranny-of-the-majority issues. E.g., famously liberal and tolerant California in 2008 voted to strip an already-existing civil right from a minority. [3])

For complex issues, I think it's better to have the decision-making concentrated in the hands of highly supervised professionals with staffs who have the time to understand the issues enough so that they have a chance of understanding the impacts. Rather than more direct democracy, what I'd like to see is more transparency and accountability for those professionals.

[1] In our most recent election we had 7 state propositions: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/qualified-b...

[2] And 15 local ones: https://voterguide.sfelections.org/en/local-ballot-measure-a...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8

In the short term:

- rapid action on climate change

- legalized abortion

- universal health care

- right to privacy

- improved internet access

- cleaner water + food

- bank reform

- DACA

- Social Security funding (returning funds stolen by previous congresses)

Heck, we might even go completely nuts and actually finish banning slavery.

Not sure what would happen in year two.

I wish I could have this level of optimism. If US voters actually wanted all of these things, there is absolutely no way that the margins in congress would be as razor thin as they are, gerrymandering or not.

Literally the effect of gerrymandering is that a set of people who share both ideology and party get more voting power.

It's pretty clear that the average Republican in the US has been galvanized into partnership, so the members of that party will very likely vote cohesively with each other.

It's also pretty clear that the same is not happening in the Democratic party. Most Democratic voters I hear from disagree with one another ideologically, and do not feel effectively represented by their party. It is not likely that voters in the Democratic party will vote cohesively with one another.

The effect of that applied to gerrymandering is that districts over-representing republicans take advantage of the average Republican voter cohesion, while districts that over-represent the Democratic party do not.

Voter cohesion is the strongest vector for outcomes I can think of in our first-past-the-post representative voting system.

It's my contention that changing the structure of our voting system or factoring out gerrymandering would have a drastic effect on legislative outcomes.

That would be great, but it assumes that there wouldn't (continue to) be massive voter suppression by the right wing, guaranteeing that their pet issues win in most of the south and midwest.