>>none of the above<<
At last, someone else!! ... another rational voice in the melee ... I have been advocating this brand of "pure democracy" for some 10 years or so, only to be met with criticism, accusations of anarchic tendencies and more. Your argument and explanation are so uncannily parallel to my own that I felt a shiver down my spine as I read them. It was almost like reading myself!! However, for this sort of radical alteration to be successful, would necessitate making voting compulsory for all. If this were not the case the "none of the above" faction might still only demonstrate their apathy, rather than taking the positive action we would support.
There is, in fact, a case for taking all non-votes as votes for "none of the above" and this might equally simplify the management of the process, whilst removing the onerous need to compel voters. I.e. if less than a particular percentage of the electorate in any particular state failed to register a vote, this could be considered a null-vote situation. To be fair, the percentage might well be variable, and dependant on the percentage gained by the actual candidate with the highest number of votes. If the null vote exceeded that percentage of the total electorate, then it would be considered a win for "none of the above".
Of course, we could take the entire argument another step nearer to true "Government of the People by the People" by doing away with the political aspect of politicians entirely. Politicians who are elected by a state, county or whatever, are supposed to be bound by the law to represent their electorate's interests but in truth, the country is managed, controlled and run by Civil Servants. (Ask Alan Greenspan). So why not offer a ballot based on "Your Dollar and how we should spend it". I.e. ... We know we need a certain amount of taxation, we know where we
're getting it form, and we know you're going to pay it to us, so how do you want us to spend it? This would immediately set, by the will of the people, the departmental budgets for the coming period, and from there on in it would only be necessary for the politicians to decide, on behalf of their electorate, how this limited resource should be allocated to the projects and schemes offered up by each department ... We have the technology to do it, and given the diversity of the nation's population, the distribution would be relatively fair.
Just something to toy with on a quiet Monday morning. |
