redesigning democracy for the 21st Century

So, another election set in the dark ages. Three parties to pick from, all of them unattractive. I am 49 and this is the first election where I don't want to vote for any of the parties. I am very dissatisfied with the current state of democracy, especially in the UK, where we have all the means to make it better but choose not to because of vested interests.

Now that we have a good internet, we can and should redesign the democratic system to make it, well, more democratic.  But let's not throw the baby out with the nappy. There are a few things right with the current system so let's make sure we keep those.

The most important thing about the UK system is that it is a representational democracy. This is a good idea, whereas letting everyone vote directly on every issue isn't. Remember all the stupid decisions that get made in student unions, where any idiotic proposal can be put forward and because only a few people will bother to vote on it, most of whom are its instigators, it gets passed. Our representatives also save us lots of effort by making most of the decisions for us, acting supposedly in our best interests (I'll address this bit later).

Secondly, having a party-based system saves a lot of effort and confusion. In general, one party is likely to represent your allegiances on a wide range of issues much more closely than any of the others. It would be nice to have some say in the areas where you differ and which matter to you, and again, more later.

But already, we have a conflict. Today, you can vote for a party or for a specific candidate, but only some of the time will those goals coincide. You may hate the local candidate put forward by your favourite party. You may hate the party that your favourite candidate belongs to, but still want that individual to represent your local interests.

Another big problem is that party allegiances are spread very differently around the country. With a system that allows only one winner per constituency, we end up with a very distorted representation of the electorate. Parties with concentrations of loyal voters will get far more seats than those whose voters are spread more evenly. Although those who benefit from this will naturally support such a system, it could hardly be considered fair that some voters end up with far more representation than others.

So we could really do with a system that allows you to do blend both support for a particular candidate and support for a party. It would then be very nice if, even after the election, you could also make sure that your preferences on specific issues are also taken into account.

Simple. At an election, why not allow people to vote for the party of their choice and also for the local candidate of their choice. So you tick two boxes, not much extra effort. In parallel to the four-yearly vote, we could also have a database where voters can maintain a tick list on every policy preference. To save effort, their chosen party or candidate would fill in all the boxes according to their default, so people would only want to tweak a few decisions here and there. They could then modify this any time they like. At any point in time, politicians could consult the voter preference database to see what the electorate wants right now on every issue, and would be able to take this into account in their debates.

The advantage of the party and candidate voting system would come into its own in levelling the parliamentary playing field to eradicate the unfairness of unequal voter distribution. Voters would have a local representative who looks after their local interests. But when votes are taken on nationwide issues, each MP would have a vote scaled according to the national support of that party. So, if a party with a large national support ends up with too few seats, they would be given a bigger vote. Those with too many seats would get less than one vote each. With modern computing, it would not be difficult managing such a system. This system would be very beneficial to parties such as the liberal democrats, who always end up with far fewer seats than their proportion of the national vote would indicate fair.

In this way, each constituency gets the MP it wants, and each party gets the same representation in parliament that it got in the national vote. Such a system avoids the worst consequences of traditional proportional representation, which often results in the MPs being the least hated rather than the most loved, and also removes a great deal of the value of local representation.

This system could be dynamically applied in other ways too. Scottish MPs may be permitted a smaller (or zero) vote on English matters, and vice versa. Women MPs would get a higher vote on gender-related issues if they have too few MPs to be otherwise representative. The same could be applied to any racial, religious, geographic or demographic issues. The say that each MP gets would be proportional to the voter population that they represent in that domain. And of course, this could take full account of the voter preference database.

So, with a little application of basic IT in the democartic system, we could have much more dynamic say in the running of our country. It would be more representative of what we all actually want. Our local needs would be protected by our locally elected MP, and the say they have in each parliamentary vote on national issues would be scaled according to the national subscription to their party. And the voter preference database would act as a third voting component, ensuring that our MPs are seen to take account of our wishes on every issue.

All we need now is a bunch of MPs who care more about the principles of democracy than in protecting their own short term interests. Don't hold your breath.

revolution is coming, in 2012

Refusal to deal properly with MPs' Expenses, encouraging massive immigration just to annoy the Tories, helping in the eradication of democracy in Europe by refusing 65 million people any say in their future, ignoring scientific fraud in climate research provided it opens up new tax and wealth re-distribution platforms, incompetence dealing with the banking collapse and subsequent worsening of double or multiple dip recession, getting us bogged down in far away conflicts, imposing a Big Brother surveillance state, associating the UK with the eradication of free speech via libel laws, making the UK the divorce capital of the world, engaging in illegal wars overseas while providing a safe haven for terrorist groups here, upending the justice system so that over-filling a bin is punished more severely than mugging or shoplifting and presiding over the dismantling of common sense in favour of political correctness, dismantling society, etc, etc.

Private sector pension schemes are being closed and watered down, while public sector workers seem to live in a protected world at private sector expense. People are getting older so the pensions won't be able to cope, and taxes will have to rise. Too much of the population already lives on handouts from the rest. Young people watch older people getting more rights, more funding and living in expensive houses, while they foot the bill via higher and higher taxes, or can't get jobs at all, and many can't afford homes of their own. Intergenerational conflict is just around the corner. Meanwhile, second and third generation immigrants are leaving to go back to their ancestors' homelands to get a higher quality of life for their kids. Today we read that the number of people leaving the UK is the highest ever, while over half a million newcomers have arrived this year. Most of them will go home later because they've either made the money they wanted or discovered that the grass isn't as green as they thought from the other side of the fence. This re-migration will replace immigration and a brain drain will leave the UK with far too few people with the right skills to sustain a viable economy.

This is all stuff we read about daily in every newspaper and hear on every TV channel. I've probably left out a lot of gripes, there are just too many to list from memory. People in the UK are pissed off big time and see little evidence that their gripes are being listened to. It is the stuff revolution is made of. But it hasn't reached critical mass yet, and the right spark hasn't been struck. My calculations over the last several years have led me to believe that we will see a revolution in 2012, based on nothing more than watching the speed of increase and volume of protest. I could be out either way by a year. If I'm out by 2, it could be next year, but I really don't think so.

Question 1: When will it reach critical mass? When will enough people become angry enough to sustain a revolution? As I said, my best guess is still 2012.

Question 2 is: what will be the spark that ignites it? I think it will be an severe increase in taxation - various tax increases to pay for the bankers' mistakes, and lots of new environmental levies, coupled with an increase in surveillance to police it all, coupled finally with a mature social web that will enable people to build and wield political power on the web effectively.

Questions 3: what will the revolution look like?
It will start peacefully as an on-line protest, and will gather speed quickly. Some charismatic people will capture the mood and rise quickly to the top and act as spokespeople. Then it will quickly disintegrate into violent protests, coordinated electronically using a variety of interwoven platforms. It will spread to multiple agendas, in much the same way as the anti-capitalist protests did, and acquire a large number of hangers-on more interested in demonstrating than the causes themselves. Violence will start to increase, and will spread to other countries that share some of the same grievances. Police will do their best to control it, but will be out-manoeuvred and outnumbered.

Question 4: what will the result be?
Anyone's guess