No subject

amassing a huge number of voters.

I reply:

Good. The people have spoken.

You continued:

The other thing is - if everything is merely voted on, how are the
bills revised and hashed out?  Who does that?

I reply:

The automated system would continually be receiving initiative proposals and 
qualifying votes for them, 24 hours a day, every day. Anyone could propose a 
counterproposal or amended proposal to any proposal. Such a counterproposal 
or amended proposal would be labeled as such by the proposser, and 
eventually the original proposal and all the counterproposals and amensded 
proposals woudl be voted on in one big multi-alternative election, in which 
one alternative would be "status-quo".

There could be procedural proposals, "motions", including the linking of 
several similar proposals for one multil-alternative election.

A voter could filter out all proposal other than those by certain names. Or 
could use a sophisitcated search system to find proposals of a certain 
description, or a combination of description and proponent name.

A system similar or the same as Robert's Rules could be used for procedural 
matters. Anything that can be done in a meeting coud be done in this 
Internet/telepoll system. Yes, some things would have to be done differently 
due to the greater number of participants.

You continued:

All this points me back to the idea that I'm still really quite
intrigued about - Direct Representation.  The one over on Dave
Robinson's site.  You still have your representatives, but there's a
direct link rather than a geographical one.

I reply:

But that's exactly how it is in the proxy system.

You continued:

That means those interest
groups that are significant nationwide but always in the minority in a
locality (atheism comes most quickly to mind) have representation.  If
any representative falls below the mathematically-designed cutoff point
required to be in the body, then they're voted out, in effect.

I reply:

Depending on the capability of the computer system, there may not be any 
need for such a cutoff threshold.

You continued:

People
can switch their representatives when they want, and the
representatives are there to both hash out/amend issues, and also form
voting coalitions.

I reply:

Good point. Proxies could contact eachother and hash things out, such as 
amendments, just as you describe. All that's possible in the proxy system or 
proxy DD.

PR advocates disparage the proxy system because it would take too large a 
meeting place. That's an 18th century objection, now that we have the 
Internet and telepoll technology.

Of course if for some reason it were necessary to meet at a meeting place it 
might be necessary to limit the number of proxies. Then proxy STV could be 
used, in which there would be no surplus transfers, just more powerful 
representatives. Of course some here have proposed better PR methods based 
on Condorcet or Approval, and those too could be adapted for proxy PR. I 
won't get into that because I don't deal with PR.

With existing technology the system needn't be limited to a meeting place, 
and could use the Internet or telepoll technology.

Mike Ossipoff

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