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0 pointsseszett10y ago0 comments

People do not have to have an opinion on everything, do they?

It doesn't really work that way today, but in an ideal world I would find it good that the 30 people who understand computers vote while the 337 others abstain.

Also, I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in France deputies usually have another job, you can't expect them to go to Paris on every wednesday to vote on things they don't even really know about.

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harshreality10y ago

It might also be 30 people who know nothing about computers but have an agenda.

The way to get informed votes on technical laws is to carefully and transparently construct councils or committees whose members are technically competent. Give those councils the power to vote on technical laws, binding the main legislature to the result of such votes.

You can't have a voting body without a quorum rule and say it's to allow the subset of the representatives who understand the subject matter to vote. That's unenforceable and will be abused for political purposes far more often than it's used because the few representatives voting are the ones who genuinely understand the proposed law.

Quorum rules are critical for basic sanity in operation of a governmental body charged with voting.

It's a pathetic excuse that they have other jobs, and they can't show up most of the time. A few U.S. States had that sentiment, and what they do is have the legislature meet only a few months every year or two.

There's no reason they couldn't have an online voting system for representatives, either. The intelligence agencies of France and FVEY can't skew the votes by breaking the cryptosystem used for online voting if the voting record is published and the representatives verify that their votes were counted correctly. One barrier to doing this is probably that on some issues, representatives don't want their votes recorded; they want voice votes. (I'm guessing France does that most of the time; the U.S. certainly does.)

seszettOP10y ago

> A few U.S. States had that sentiment, and what they do is have the legislature meet only a few months every year or two.

That might work in a US state that only has a few million inhabitants, but I can't see how an entire country could work this way.

As for the rest, I think you are very much assuming that your legislation system is the one and only way to go, even though looking at it from faraway it's not entirely obvious that it works better than the system we have, which seems to lack basic sanity, uses unenforceable principles and will be abused more often than it's used according to you.

I honestly think quorum rules have no positive impact on democracy, at worst allowing minorities to obstruct legislation by simply not showing up, and at best making clueless members or parliament show up just to vote what they were told to.

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