The system of a single country president must be flawed.

[Will]

I've been realizing this over the last few months as people have been talking about presidential elections. There's something wrong with having to choose an arbitrary number of officers for political office. This is especially noticeable for the highest offices, like president.

• You compete to get the office.
• People spend absurd amounts of money campaigning.
• Most countries limit what can be spent, making it even more like a game.
• You have to compromise in order to get someone you want in because you can only vote for one person; all of the democrats are going to have to agree on one relatively moderate candidate.
• The job is obviously quite stressful. Why should any job be so stressful?
• In particular, why should a job like president where one regularly has to make many extremely important decisions be so stressful?[/list:u]A better system would spread power more to allow wider representation and to reduce the burden on the politicians. I haven't thought through all of the details of an uber leet political system, but I'm thinking something like this would work:
  • Everything is done by popular vote over something like the Internet with digitally signed ballots.
  • The government somehow enforces the digital signatures without depending on specific people to guard secrets or restricting access.
  • The government is treated like a company whose shareholders are the people.
  • Popular voting is available for every tiny issue for which voting is practical.
  • People are not expected to vote for things they don't care about, but voting occurs frequently enough that people can change the course of policies by encouraging more people to vote in the next vote. This allows people not to worry about the more mundane things unless they actually care about them. The people who actually care about the more mundane things can encourage others to vote on them. This replaces the current practice of campaigning.[/list:u]

[SoulRiser]

I like these ideas.

I can't think of anything to add though.

[akdonn]

Will,
You should read the "Federalist Papers" about the thinking that went into forming our constitutional government. It's a system that has worked more than 200 years and many people have died to preserve it. After reading this and the U.S Constitution, if you think having the entire country run by popular vote, then perhaps you should get some counseling. It's kind of like the anarchy argument that gets thrown around on this forum like it could happen...

[TheDelinquent]

Rome worked for even longer.

[Ahab]

Im an anti federalist in the Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin sense,

[Will]

akdonn Wrote:Will,
You should read the "Federalist Papers" about the thinking that went into forming our constitutional government. It's a system that has worked more than 200 years and many people have died to preserve it. After reading this and the U.S Constitution, if you think having the entire country run by popular vote, then perhaps you should get some counseling. It's kind of like the anarchy argument that gets thrown around on this forum like it could happen...

Communication has been much improved in that past 200 years. Most importantly, the Internet was invented.

I haven't read the "Federalist Papers", but I've taken history classes in school and probably picked up the gist of them. The ideas for forming your government were revolutionary at the time of its founding, hence the need for a revolutionary war, and turned out to be quite good, at least according to you. This shows that a system's lack of testing doesn't make it bad.

My argument is more detailed and better than most of the "anarchy" arguments that get thrown around this forum.

Lastly, when you say that it "couldn't happen", you really mean that it could but it would be virtually impossible to change people's attitudes and the all the relevant institutions to make it happen. The idea could thus be awesome even though it "couldn't happen".

EDIT: I like this cartoon; why should you be required to answer math problems correctly? It would be different if the math problems meant something and doing them incorrectly caused a problem, but why can't you do them incorrectly or not at all? School should be more optional.

[Gorebell]

The system of a single country president must be flawed.
(It's call checks and balances, look it up)

# You compete to get the office.
Of course you damn compete, that's how we decide who the hell gets the damn job.

# People spend absurd amounts of money campaigning.
"People spend too much campaigning."
# Most countries limit what can be spent, making it even more like a game.
"I don't like that there's a limit to how much people can spend campaigning."

# You have to compromise in order to get someone you want in because you can only vote for one person; all of the democrats are going to have to agree on one relatively moderate candidate.
"We shall merge the body parts of the candidates we like into one being. We shall call him...The Omnicrat."

# The job is obviously quite stressful. Why should any job be so stressful?
# In particular, why should a job like president where one regularly has to make many extremely important decisions be so stressful?
"The President's job is too stressful, let's completely change the system so he can have an easier time doing a job he worked for years to get knowing exactly the kind of crap he'd have to deal with!"


lol no
You seem to desire change for the sake of change, or perhaps you merely want your own opinion.

[Will]

Gorebell Wrote:The system of a single country president must be flawed.
(It's call checks and balances, look it up)

# You compete to get the office.
Of course you damn compete, that's how we decide who the hell gets the damn job.

# People spend absurd amounts of money campaigning.
"People spend too much campaigning."
# Most countries limit what can be spent, making it even more like a game.
"I don't like that there's a limit to how much people can spend campaigning."

# You have to compromise in order to get someone you want in because you can only vote for one person; all of the democrats are going to have to agree on one relatively moderate candidate.
"We shall merge the body parts of the candidates we like into one being. We shall call him...The Omnicrat."

# The job is obviously quite stressful. Why should any job be so stressful?
# In particular, why should a job like president where one regularly has to make many extremely important decisions be so stressful?
"The President's job is too stressful, let's completely change the system so he can have an easier time doing a job he worked for years to get knowing exactly the kind of crap he'd have to deal with!"


lol no
You seem to desire change for the sake of change, or perhaps you merely want your own opinion.

I don't think checks and balances are at all related to what I'm proposing. According to what I've learned in school, checks and balances prevent each part of the government from gaining too much power.

Actually, maybe checks and balances do relate. If everything could be run by popular vote, representatives would not exist, and checks and balances would be less necessary.

I'm worried that the process of selecting the government members wastes time and money and discourages change and that the jobs themselves are unnecessarily stressful for the people who do get elected. Separate from what I mentioned in the original post, I feel like the current systems must be inferior because they have so many arbitrary numbers. For the United States: one president, one vice president, 100 senators.

The competition is only strong because the power of the president is very concentrated; only one person gets the most powerful job in the country. The absurd amounts of money spent campaigning show how strong the competition is. Such competition is inefficient. It would be awesome if multiple people could be president somehow, but that wouldn't work without changing other things. Once you start changing those things, you realize that the same problems exist in all political offices on some scale, and you might as well change those things for the other political offices.

You wouldn't have to merge the body parts together if you didn't have to choose exactly one person.

Your interpretation of the stress bit is almost right. If the jobs that replace the president don't make all of the decisions, those workers won't be nearly so stressed, or the stress won't be so much of a problem.

I haven't thought the improved system through entirely; I just know that the current system of a single president must be flawed because of all of the inefficiencies it creates, particularly in the election process.

[Alucard483]

TheDelinquent Wrote:Rome worked for even longer.

Yes, and that was a republic followed by a fascist government.

[TheDelinquent]

Alucard483 Wrote:

TheDelinquent Wrote:Rome worked for even longer.

Yes, and that was a republic followed by a fascist government.

Sounds familiar.

"I'm worried that the process of selecting the government members wastes time and money and discourages change and that the jobs themselves are unnecessarily stressful for the people who do get elected. Separate from what I mentioned in the original post, I feel like the current systems must be inferior because they have so many arbitrary numbers. For the United States: one president, one vice president, 100 senators."

All government discourages change whist wasting time and money.
Why not suggest that ALL people have equal say in what affects them rather than some arbitrary number? Whoops, that would be anarchy. Don't mind me and my crazy radical subversive immorality.

[Liquid]

Multiple leaders usualy don't work very well... Ex: the Roman Triumvirates (3), French "Directoire" (5), French Consulate (3)... But then again the 2 man systems worked in acient times Duumvirate/Consulate/Suffate system.... right now the closest example would be the swiss Federal Council (7) they're about equal but they take turns being "President" (The "President" only has more power then the rest in "urgent situations")

About the internet voting, Alvin Toffler (The word "techno" is based on his techno-rebel idea)predicted in 1970 that it would happen someday... although the internet was mostly a prediction back then... My view,as I've stated before, is that the internet isn't secure enough for that though... even with ssl cirtificates it's risky, and could be maniplated in other ways... Securing the internet whold take an iron fisted government to accomplish... But would a government like that be freedom loving? Well that's my take on it....

[bringdownthesystem]

Most all systems have some flaws, that is going to be inherent in every place you look. I think the point your missing here is that it's not the president. The president really doesn't have as much power as you think, when you think deeper into it and see all the other people controlling him and other world leaders on such a massive scale it's kind of scary. I suppose not to mention that whoever gets elected is going to be because they wanted him in there, not because he was voted it. If I am correct the last two or even before that elections were staged and or altered in some way...so the country is just flawed period, one single leader or not.

[Will]

I only mention president because I'm fed up with the chaos surrounding presidential campaigns. Everything I've said does apply to all offices to some degree, and some very democratic, anarchist government would be awesome. When I propose that internet voting scheme, I am saying that new technology makes more democratic government possible.

Unless anyone defines any current major governments as anarchist, anarchy probably didn't work so well because it would have survived if it were. The internet could make anarchy work though.

[bringdownthesystem]

I would think the internet, like the electronic voting machines, wouldn't work because of the ease of others controlling them. The electronic voting machines from daibolt(spelling?) I believe it was who made them, were the biggest problem with the voting fraud. It just takes a command such as for every 5 democratic vote, take one or two out and switch it to Rep.

[Will]

bringdownthesystem Wrote:I would think the internet, like the electronic voting machines, wouldn't work because of the ease of others controlling them. The electronic voting machines from daibolt(spelling?) I believe it was who made them, were the biggest problem with the voting fraud. It just takes a command such as for every 5 democratic vote, take one or two out and switch it to Rep.

This is why proprietary stuff is so dangerous; if you don't know how it works, it's easy for other people to use it to take advantage of you.

As strange as it may sound, there must be ways to overcome this, even if they aren't already developed. There just have to be; we have to be able to progress technologically. PGP/GPG encryption already comes close: you can verify signatures and decrypt things without knowing the other person's private key.

[Liquid]

Will Wrote:

bringdownthesystem Wrote:I would think the internet, like the electronic voting machines, wouldn't work because of the ease of others controlling them. The electronic voting machines from daibolt(spelling?) I believe it was who made them, were the biggest problem with the voting fraud. It just takes a command such as for every 5 democratic vote, take one or two out and switch it to Rep.

This is why proprietary stuff is so dangerous; if you don't know how it works, it's easy for other people to use it to take advantage of you.

As strange as it may sound, there must be ways to overcome this, even if they aren't already developed. There just have to be; we have to be able to progress technologically. PGP/GPG encryption already comes close: you can verify signatures and decrypt things without knowing the other person's private key.

With the current internet system there are too many attack points...

Computer >>> ISP >>> Backbone >>> DNS Servers >>> DNS Server with Address
Computer <<< ISP <<< Backbone <<< DNS Servers <<< DNS Server with Address
Computer >>> ISP >>> Backbone >>> Host >>> Web Server
Computer <<< ISP <<< Backbone <<< Host <<< Web Server

ANY point in the system could be manipulated to send fake data to either the voter or the government. Hackers usualy attack either the user's computer or the server. That's what law inforcement's policy is too, due to their trouble hunting down the hackers phantomD and JSZ, who were some of the few hackers to actualy attack the backbone servers.... Attacking the end points is far easier, and if you are aiming at a specific person or peice of data it's easier. Trojaning the backbones takes so much skill that even most "1337" don't even try it. But we're talking about the government, and the government owns a lot of the backbone already, and already has "keyword filtering" (for NSA) on some of the private backbone servers...

The idea of making a new, unique "network" just for voting would probably work... but the only way to be sure no one put a "voting glitch" in the code would be to make it open source... To be secure the network would to have all the computers connected to it be only special voting computers/servers that are cut off from the internet or any other computers at all, have the file system scaned constantly... and the network would not alow any unauthorized computers/servers onto it... The encription/decription system would be a sore point... Open sourcing it would mean it's no longer secure, keeping the source secret, who will be the one who reads the source code to look for any flaws? Maybe it should send the voters name along with their vote... and add some mechanism for people to see what the stored value of their vote is after it is stored...

the network would be something like...

Computer >>> LAN Server >>> Transfer Servers >>> Network Address Server
Computer <<< LAN Server <<< Transfer Servers <<< Network Address Server
Computer incripts data (has digital certificate)
Computer >>> LAN Server >>> Transfer Servers >>> Vote Counting Server
Computer <<< LAN Server <<< Transfer Servers <<< Vote Counting Server
Vote Counting Server decodes data and stores it.

Like the internet but a bit more secure and not hooked up to personal computers and private servers