I would suggest there are certain areas of politics that would be better suited than others to referenda, and instinctively I like the idea. I agree with the poster who suggested the majority of the population aren't all that smart (paraphrasing) but also agree that argument applies almost as well to what voting we do now.
Can you help me sort out my confusion about this? I think you see my point that if we're too stupid to vote on issues we're too stupid to vote full stop. I kind of still feel that has a powerful logic - not, of course, that it means we should move towards less enfranchisement (let's just have people with PhDs with voting rights), but that it's a potentially enlightening criticism of us as citizens now and how we organise our affairs, and that it should stimulate us to take more political responsibility directly. Yet I can't help but concede dudalb's point, I don't self-medicate (often), I choose a doctor, and that means I'm doing a very similar thing to choosing a political party. Maybe the skills we plebs need is how to recognise the good guys from the bad guys when they're pontificating on the podium. Trouble is, I honestly think the system we have encourages the spin and corruption, and perhaps we should be even more worried if our best bet is to study body language to try to assess which party leader is the biggest liar.
Dudalb, BTW, has almost utterly misunderstood me. It would be unusual to find a more harshly realistic person than me when it comes to judging the human condition. I see us as almost entirely following the same biological laws that govern all other species, while we imagine that we direct our affairs rationally and progressively due to our intelligence and civilisation. We live as a species in much the same way as we make decisions individually - before we become consciously aware of them. We are bumble beings, just blindly fumbling our way towards the edge of a cliff (ooh, change of metaphor, we're lemmings now), fighting for resources and arguing about who's got the biggest, hardest, cruelest, most forgiving and loving God. But apparently when I wake up from my fantasy I'll be sadder, according to the great arbiter of Reality. The reason I'm "idealistic" (I'd say imaginitive) sometimes is to try to make more of the great potentials we humans do have. If resignation and helplessness stopped us striving for a more rational approach to life we'd never have had the Enlightenment. I'm trying to ask people if we're not sick of sleep-walking towards the end of the freaking world, passing the political buck to whomever we bothered to vote for, because we can't be bothered to make political decisions ourselves and don't know enough about running a country and like reading the Sun. And I get told to wake up. The comparison with the Enlightenment is clear - we used to argue that we're not clever enough to know the will of god, so we obviously have to keep asking the priest and the Pope what's true and what to do. Have a Crusade, obviously. Have a war on terrorism and another on drugs.
The areas I think are best suited are those such as criminal sentencing, civil liberties (drugs, weapon possession, surveillance/records) and political reform (such as the upcoming vote on a/v)
But why? Is that partly from your automatic referencing what 'Referendum' means and finding that it's normally used for the big stuff? What's wrong with local politics working on relatively trivial issues this way? At least we can immediately see an advantage - the issues aren't so critical if we get them wrong.
I too hope the internet and edemocracy get used as a way of improving democracy.
Hurrah - a fellow dreamer!
But the whole 'yourfreedom' website they just launched is just awful, and totally transparent imo.
Transparently what, in your opinion? I think it's no more than a political ploy and a pretense of listening. Crucially there is zero actual enfranchisement here. You're being "given" a place to have your say, as if you didn't have it already. OTOH, I can't dismiss the fact that there may be some genuine intention to take the people's views into account in formulating policy, but it's not power to the people, just a chat room (and for all we know, primarily a place to identify troublemakers so we can lock them up without charge for a month or so).
well you know, referendum rock when done well.