What is New About Direct Democracy and why E-Democracy? What will happen to Referendum?

RAJ SUBRAMANIAN

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE -BOTANY CONSTITUENCY - NEW ZEALAND

JOIN HANDS WITH HIM FOR GIVING ABSOLUTE GOVERNING POWERS BACK INTO THE HANDS OF CITIZENS

FOR E-DEMOCRACY FOR E-DISCUSSION FOR E-VOTING FOR E-POLLING

Political Philosophy of Direct democracy was said to be standing in contrast to representative democracy, where sovereignty is exercised by a subset of the people, usually on the basis of election. However, it was said to be possible to combine the two into representative direct democracy.

They were saying Modern direct democracy was characterized by three pillars:

Initiative
Referendum including binding referendums
Recall

Referendums can include the ability to hold a binding referendum on whether a given law should be scrapped. This effectively grants the populace a veto on government legislation. Recalls gives the people the right to remove from office elected officials before the end of their term.

Now,the time and space issues are already sorted out by internet and technology, the definition of direct democracy itself is changing.

I would say Direct Democracy, now is not in contrast to representative democracy. It becomes an inclusive form now.

The concept of the three pillars are no more applicable in their true sense.

There is less need for initiative, referendum and recall. As, handing over of mandate to Representatives and trying to control them through these three, is absent.

Here in the true e-democracy I mean there is no need to hand over the power to Representatives. Representatives are treated as messengers. They don't need to think or decide alone.

The wider public are involved in the decision making process involved in the Governance of the Country.

The arguments against the previous version of direct democracy, that of 1) Scale 2)Practicality and Efficiency 3)Demagoguery 4)Complexity 5)Voter apathy 6)Self-interest.7)Suboptimality 8) Manipulation by timing and framing have almost been addressed. Now emerges a commonly acceptable formula subject to fine tuning.

I make it a simple reading from the point of our constituents/Voters:

You vote for an M.P. - for instance, me an independent candidate. We all agree that we register voluntarily for Online E-Democracy,E-Polling.

I am elected and I go the Parliament. We got a web site for Botany - say www.Botany.govt.nz or www.Botany.org.nz which is secured, and used only by Botany electorates.

By default all the electorates are registered and are given a separate email id hosted by our secured system. All voters can log into their system with very secure log in credentials, that will be established.

All the legislative proposals in the Parliament, with their arguments for and against are posted on the website. Three non-partisan,common-man, observers or ombudsmen are appointed for our constituency rotating every month, from volunteers. Their job is to write precise pros and cons about the proposed legislation in an easily understandable manner in one or few pages. It will be interpretted in other languages that our voters want.

Registered voters read these, they discuss and add pros and cons and their own reasons, vote online by a click and the results (individual voting pattern is fully non-identifiable) are available to the whole Botany constitutents.

The MP votes in the Parliament according to the majority opinion. There is a distinction between majority votes and majority of voters. I would prefer the voice of majority of voters registered.

To discuss and vote online requires time and effort by voters. But when we think that we are setting examples for the entire world, we should be proud about doing that. I believe if we can give some financial incentives to the constituency voters, the process will be accelerated. I will ask for a Govt. Special funding to make it a prestigious proto-project of the entire nation, for other countries to follow. I assure you that I will keep a low profile so that the achievement in this respecct is projected by the entire nation rather than our constituency.

Again, the opportunity comes to us, Botany Voters, to prove we are World leaders. Your can put our constituency in all world history books as the first for E-Democracy.

Choice is yours. Vote for Raj Subramanian, to bring E-Democracy to your doors, or rather computers. I am here to take it head-on, to follow up.