Topic: “Referendum democracy” and the Condorcet theorem (Read 145 times)

It has some flaws, that is true specially when we talk about representative democracy, but democracy co tiniest to be the best way to approach the challenges and the future of society in which in person within it has a voice and a fraction of the participation to choose their leaders and take decisions based on the political affiliation of the chosen leaders.
Other systems of government like Autocracy are way faster to create scenarios in which corruption is blatant and difficult to stop in the short time, while in a system like the United States have, it is possible to prosecute those who have been caught abusing their position of power to personally benefit from it.
Nobody is supposed to be above the law and nobody is supposed to be able to disfranchise the will of the people to steer their country.

I don't fully understand your question. I have said that in this example the "rock, scissors, paper" situation appears, which means that if A and B go into second tour - A wins with 2/3, if B and C go into the second tour - B wins with 2/3, and if C and A go into the second tour - C wins 2/3. Is my logic clear?

Is this an attempt to follow the "middle path", while rejecting the two extreme opposites inside an election? Extreme A's public hates extreme C, and vice versa, so both of them agree that candidate B would be a better alternative when compared to the one they most hate.

It's not the ideal outcome for the extremists, but it's also not the worst scenario, so they are likely to prefer this than losing to the one they are totally against. Maybe if this concept was presented in daily conversations, people would become open to hear and who knows, they could accept applying it for real.

On the other hand, it's not the assurance problems we face are going to be solved. Politicians don't survive inside this industry if they are ethical and genuine. You can elect candidate A, B or C, and there will be still lies, manipulation and corruption going on.

For ages - with the coming of the British Magna Carta - the British understood that there was a difference between a man and a person. This followed over into American law when America became a nation, because it kept the people free.

American legal dictionaries don't show this clearly. But if you get into the reasons why - the legal cases written in the legal dictionaries - it's always because some ignorant man accepted the position of person... that he was the person. In fact, the word 'acceptance' is a major word in the legal dictionaries because of this.

If we don't make sure that the people who indicate their position one way or another, realize that their expression of their position is only that of a person expressing it, and not a that of the man expressing it, they are making themselves liable for things that they don't have to be liable for, and reducing their freedom thereby.

That's basically the issue with this World's democratic system. It does not guarantee that the best,right or good idea wins. It depends on majority opinion whether right or wrong. But with the method I posted above, there is greater chance for the right opinion to win whether it's in the minority or not. With the method the vote of 1 person (with the best idea) out of 1million votes from a million people in a society can determine the leader of the society

Yes, currently the Switzerland has a best political system in my opinion. And in Estonia the electronic voting is implemented so currently it is fully possible to perform a referendum each week:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia
I have some examples how referendums work:
1) In Germany, the authorities closed nuclear reactors, some of them after 02.2022, which is very wild (in fact, they continue to buy oil from Russia as they did before - see Saudi Arabian supplies). But in Switzerland, referendums were held in which the population did not support the closure of nuclear power plants;

2) In the United States, religious rightists prohibit abortions, and as far as I know, wherever referendums are held on this issue, the population allows abortions;

3) In Switzerland, the population in the referendums did not cancel the compulsory military service. This clearly contrasts with the fact that in other European countries, the ruling leftists are doing everything to eliminate their armies and military spending;

4) In Slovenia, in 2015, a referendum was held in which the population voted against same-sex marriages (this is a contradictory example, but maybe someone here will appreciate it).

What you are saying is similar to what already happens in Switzerland. There are popular consultations for many topics, some of them very bizarre and may with nearly zero possibility of being approved, but the threshold to present something for consultation is small.

There are many inherent problems to a perpetual referedum, namely that one of the existing problems of democracy is the limited horizon of political decision. A continuous referendum would make that problem worse.

Further...

The majority is trampled upon by the tiny government group.

The majority is only the majority regarding electing government officers. Never do the people of the majority think alike. It's the same for minorities.

The US government was originally never meant to touch the people. The US government was to regulate only the States. However, to be fair, the government was allowed to contract with individual people. This contracting was enlarged and modified by the 13th and 14th Amendments.

The Amendment enlargement and modification made it so that any man/woman had to state their position if they didn't want to be automatically included in the contracting with government. Few people state their position in this regard.

Note that a man or woman is not a 'person' in light of the government, except that he/she has agreed to be. Look up the definitions of 'person' in government paperwork.

In other words, Referendum Democracy makes the people to be directly hooked to the Federal Government, which is exactly the problem for the people. If people had not contracted with the Federal, the US government would have almost 100% NO authority over them.

If you think America is a democracy, think again. It's not. America is a Constitutional Republic. The people do not directly elect the president and members of the federal government; the representatives of the people in each state elect them.  The danger of democracy is the tyranny of the majority which leads to oppression and despotism of the minority groups.

For me, democracy is still the best form of Governance, what your proposing now, a time will also come, it will begin to have it's own challenges. The majority are the choice of the people, and that's the prospect Democracy has come with, politicians are not always interested in engaging the people, but democracy has made it in such a way that, you cannot win Elections without talking to the people, as citizens and people oriented programs are what will help you win election. Democracy has it's ups and downs but it's the safest for now.

It's a way to allow voters to review each other's votes, and upvote or downvote them depending on how accurate the evidences for or against each candidate in the votes are.


It's important to note that voters with accurate evidences and upvotes gain some Voting Power which adds more weight to their future votes

I don't fully understand what you mean. Maybe what you say is simply one more way to persuade the people to argue with each other before voting?

The best I can think of is evidence based voting. With it every one is allowed to rate, upvote or downvote a candidate with proofs that show how accurate, inaccurate, good or bad his plans, ideas, contents, claims of past performances,etc are. And the voters can upvote/downvote each other votes with proofs of their accuracy or inaccuracy. Unchallenged votes, or votes with more upvotes that haven't been accurately challenged may be the winners.
Voting is completely open to the public in permissionless manner

1) The software for voting can be stored in the blockchain;
2) If I am not mistaken, in Estonia some temporary unique numbers are provided for the voters so they can check the public base with this numbers to ensure that their votes were counted fairly.

The idea of referendum democracy sounds good to me if the process is fair and void of errors. This system promotes freedom of speech and also ensures that laws are made based on popular opinions.

But my reservations is that this online system can be hacked or compromised, which will make the voting flawed. Another problem is that the voices of minorities will be silenced. An example is in a country where Muslims are the majority, other religious faithful might be forced to obey Islamic laws because the memorandum will always favour the majority. The same thing will also apply in a country that has different tribes. The tribe with the highest population will always have their way.

A believe that the best political system would be a “referendum democracy”: an online referendum must be performed at least each week, and these referendums should cover not only laws, but also decisions within the competence of the judiciary power (fines and punishments). If the population votes to ban a mass media, so be it. And vice versa, if the population votes to fine people who slander this mass media, so be it. I hope my logic is clear.
However, with this system new problems will arise due to the Condorcet theorem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox

https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk

This problem can be illustrated by the following example. There are three candidates - A, B and C. A third of voters think that A is better than B and B is better than C; a third of voters think that B is better than C and C is better than A, and a third thinks that C is better than A and A is better than B. It is easy to show that it is a "rock, paper, scissors" situation, i.e., depending on who goes to the second round, anyone of A, B, C can confidently win. Theoretically, the problem can be solved as follows: the voter does not just vote for one of the candidates, but gives each candidate a score on a ten-point scale. If these scores were honest, everything would work well. But voters can lie with these scores, i.e., for example, if there are many candidates, a voter can give one a 10 and all the others a 1. It is quite unclear how to solve this problem; but this will be a formulated scientific problem for future generations. For example, I can suggest the following solution: select three hundred voters by lot after voting and ask them to take a lie detector test.
Such a system will be necessary in the event of the implementation of the "dictatorship of the majority" that I propose: so that, roughly speaking, it does not happen that 90% vote to make the remaining 10% slaves.
I need to find a word to name this hypothetical correct political system. Please help me with this.