Could America Ever Become a Direct Democracy?

[zathras]

@muddi900

America already has the only practical, barely so, direct democracy in the world. The electorate elects the candidates to vote for on almost all levels and then those go into the legislature to pass the legislative buck to the electorate by giving them a shot to vote for State constitution.

It is insane by the standards of the rest of the world.

I agree that it sounds insane, at least I was unable to follow your description.

I also know that the US has a relatively high level of direct democracy in some states, with many referendums on various bills, but I doubt there is ever more direct democracy than in Switzerland.

@virtuous_sloth

but delegate votes on other subjects to others that I trust.

And then there are votes on the subject “which subject does this vote belong to”. Whoever that vote is delegated to in the end will have all the power.

@virtuous_sloth

But what I don’t know is whether it is possible to have an authentic delegation while preserving secret ballots.

I am generally sceptical of e-voting because nothing beats paper voting in terms of “verifyability by everybody”. And I consider that to be among the most important properties of a voting system. If you have a perfectly safe, fair and manipulation-proof cryptographic system, and the lunatic fringe manages to convince 40% of the general populace that it’s all rigged, you’ve got yourself a perfect recipe for a civil war. And that’s not good for democracy.