The Future of Democracy
Charlie Nelson
May 2000
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Winston Churchill
Choosing between two equally incompetent short-sighted political parties every few years is hardly the full expression of democracy. But is there a system that allows individuals to express their policy preferences in a way that might be actioned?
Dick Morris thinks that he has found such a system. He is a former political advisor to President Bill Clinton and is the author of Vote.com.
He believes that the internet makes direct democracy possible. His website, Vote,com, founded with his wife, Eileen McGann, has been online for six months.
Whenever a person votes on Vote,com, an e-mail of their opinion is sent to their MP.
Sounds good but there are imperfections in this scheme.
There are at least three objections to this approach to participatory democracy.
First, it is not representative. Not everyone will be accessing the internet even in five years time. Even amongst those who do, not all will choose to express their opinion in this way.
Second, what safeguard is there that some people will not vote twice - or two hundred times?
Third, making political decisions always involves trade-offs. Most people would agree that we need more police. But there are budget constraints, so should we fund extra police by cutting back on health and education?
I think that we do need a means of expressing our views on individual policies but the way we do this must be fair and recognise trade-offs.
Here is another idea. It also has imperfections but does capture trade-offs.
Suppose that when we fill in our tax return, we are allowed to allocate 50% of the tax we pay to various budget initiatives (leaving the government of the day to allocate the other 50%).
This would be much more participatory than the present system and would capture trade-offs. It might even encourage some people to pay their taxes rather than avoid them!