A tech startup company in California, PlaceAVote, would like legislation to be voted on by citizens, replacing Congress.
“If a PlaceAVote candidate is voted into office, all bills that come before Congress will be decided by the district via majority vote online,” states the company’s web site.
The company has 2 candidates running for Congress who promise to vote according to tallies from the public.
More details from their website:
1. Registered voters can place a vote on all bills that come before the United States Congress.
A. They can place or change a vote as soon as the bill is made publicly available.
B. Voting ends 15 minutes before the elected representative is required to place their vote.
2. Registered voters can choose to delegate their vote to another registered voter in their district.
A. Registered voters may be allowed to temporarily withdraw delegation for a single issue.
3. Registered voters get real-time stats on the status of any vote at any time.
4. Registered voters can view their historical votes.
5. Registered voters can audit their vote and insure that it was counted.
6. Registered voters can discuss bills through a forum-style format.
7. Registered voters can quickly and clearly understand all the riders on a bill.
8. Bills will be summarized outlining key elements such as costs, who benefits, who pays and who or what industry lobby wrote the bill.
9. Registered voters can suggest new bills.
10. If a bill is authored by the district, it must receive majority vote before it is proposed in committee.
Your thoughts?
The startup, PlaceAVote, envisions Americans voting on legislation through their software system and is currently running two candidates for Congress, both software engineers, who vow to vote according to the tallies recorded by the system.
“If a PlaceAVote candidate is voted into office, all bills that come before Congress will be decided by the district via majority vote online,” states the company’s web site.
One of PlaceAVote’s candidates, John Catano, said that the Founding Fathers “designed a political system that countless others have been based off of.”
“That being said, if they had access to current technology, don’t you think they would use some of it to address the will of the people?” He asked.
While the push to bring back power to the individual is encouraging, especially when the congressional approval rating is in the single digits, there are, however, some pitfalls with the concept, which appears to revolve around the “will of the majority.”
For one thing, the creators of PlaceAVote announced they are “committed to democracy.”
But America was founded as a republic under the rule of law with respect to individual liberties, not as a democracy which only leads to mob rule fueled by the unrestrained whims of the public.
“Democracy is the ‘direct’ rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success,” states a U.S. Army training manual from 1928. “Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government.”
“They made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic.”
In other words, the Founding Fathers did not want a democracy in which the birth rights of the minority could be voted away by the majority.
Additionally, there is always the possibility that voting software can be manipulated or hacked by corrupt officials, allowing the establishment to flip votes in its favor while also giving individual voters the false impression that they are more empowered than ever before.
It’s been well documented that electronic voting machines, for example, are extremely vulnerable to voting fraud.
The Government Accountability Office even admitted as far back as 2005 that it was possible for voting staff to alter electronic ballots without being detected.
“This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a ‘widespread conspiracy’ but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will,” the GAO declared in its report on the 2004 presidential election. “With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.”
While steps should be taken to empower the individual in the face of collective tyranny, attempting to do so with mobocratic concepts and fallible technology is fraught with danger.
NO. THAT’S A BAD IDEA.
I think not. This is why we elect a congress. If you look at how bad we do with that project, just try to imagine how bad we would do trying to read and understand a bill that leaves you wondering if you are scratching your head or your butt. All of the legeleze that even the the legals don’t understand would be overwhelming.
What ?? Replace congress ?? Those $#%&!@*S would flood our alcohol and drugs rehab programs and since they don’t know how to work, they would need to sign up for welfare. And since what little they are doing now is illegal, most of them would end up in prison.
oh hell no
very interesting
No, NON, NO !!!That would be the BIGGEST mistake ever of all time !!! Why ? Due to the fact the current admin. is doing whatever they want, they would be able to “TOTALLY ENSLAVE” the human race …think about it !!! What really needs to be done is to place higher restrictions on our government officials & pay them less money !!! Ofcourse, there should be more … these officials should be made to adhere to the vows they take & they should NOT be permitted to pick anyone to replace them if they are subjected to a “RE-CALL” !!!
I believe this is refered to as Direct Democracy.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for lunch. The founding fathers chose our system very carefully. We would be well advised to ‘leave it as designed”…
I like the idea, especially since this kind of technology has taken away so many American’s jobs…why not take Congress’ jobs from them, since they get paid to do NOTHING…
Replace, we vote out?, & regularly fresh New constitutional minds, for starters … To many politicians have gone Benedict Arnold & further Breach the system to near collapse … get them all out … ? Yeekz ?
What if you have multiple IP #s?