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.
Hell no!!!”””
good luck
Sounds good but how safe is our system. To many openings for viruses and fraud
That’s why the founders put in place a Constitutional Republic , so we wouldn’t have mob rule! We are not a Democracy ! If our politicians would abide by and follow the Constitution like they’re supposed too, the Government would run smoothly!
I think it’s time to repeal the 17th Amendment to the constitution which allowed for public voting for Senators and Congressmen. There is just to much Lobby Money for the taking, and now Con. and Sen. must nearly sell there votes or souls for enough money to run a campaign. Don’t tell me you are stupid enough to think that money has NO strings! It should go right back to the House and Senates of each state to send their representative to Washington! This would again put emphasis on local elections, as people would want the right representative in there to voice their opinion and champion their cause. That way they could still recall that dude in a heart beat! Let the Senate of each State put forth candidates and the House do the voting. That Obama was elected by majority, shows a failed system is evident. This system that we call democracy has failed in the United States of America! a sad day
we have the right and responsibility to change our Constitution as we see fit. Dennis Barnard you hit it on the head.
I say no!we have one in Illinois and fraud has already taken place
Our founders did not mean for majority to rule….for good reason. The nuts in the cities would be telling all the sane people in the country how to live!
So I sit home watching C-Span all day and voting on things I know nothing about?
REAL Democracy has never worked ANYWHERE, though it has been tried.