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This reminds me of an idea I had for a hybrid between representative and direct democracy where every citizen would be entitled to vote on any bill, but if they didn't have the time/will to do their research, they would be allowed to delegate their vote to one of the political parties. Thus, you would have some votes coming from individuals, and some coming in batches from political parties voting on behalf of individuals.
I've heard of that idea but frankly I'd be frightened by how many people would be parted from their votes by manipulative tactics or people finding ways to buy such votes (even if explicitly disallowed, they'd find an indirect way). That second point in particular would be a big concern because the people who have little else to sell but their own vote would be the ones most likely to sell it and organizations buying such votes would likely be those with a vested interest in keeping the poor, poor which would now be even easier.
Yeah, round our way, we call that Brexit.
The thing is now, manipulative tactics are used to persuade people to choose one option over another either for representatives, or in some cases like Brexit, directly for specific policies. In that scenario one might argue that those that successfully made the case for one side of the referendum did so by knowingly presenting the outcome of choosing one policy differently from what they knew to be the reality hence "manipulating" people.
However, with this proposed idea of being able to delegate your vote to other people or organisations, I'm concerned people will be manipulated into giving up their ability to vote on something one way or the other they don't even need to be convinced of the merits of something, just convinced to give it up. Seems like a small difference but I can imagine people being unknowingly disenfranchised thinking they're giving up something else, or possibly having to give up their vote even though they do want to use it because if they're offered some tangible immediate benefit in exchange, they might not be in a position to decline such an offer.
In these cases the distortion of the democratic ideal is worse than in the Brexit scenario for example, because at least in that situation one could say (however disingenuously) that that vote more or less reflected how convincing the case was for the leave campaign and argue that anyone saying that leave voters were manipulated is just being patronizing to such voters by denying their agency in the decision. Of course that's a simplistic way to portray it, but there's an element of truth there. At the very least that referendum does tell you what most people decided to vote for even if the details of how the cases were presented might be dishonest. Delegated votes would more accurately be described as a reflection of who successfully obtained votes through whatever means, not who prosecuted a case the most convincingly.
All very fair points, and I agree. I was just being flip re Brexit really :-)
That's just what we have now though. At least under the proposed hybrid approach people would have the option of voting directly.
Yes that's what I was thinking too. The worst case scenario under what I propose would be what we have now.