FAQ: Interesting subtleties of DR
What's so bad about collective decisions made by voting?
- Elections allow only occasional, sudden changes in government, and sample voter opinion only on that one
- Elections are held at a time convenient for the government, not for voters.
- Not everyone can get their way, as we can when we make individual decisions among many choices.
- When a large number of people make a collective decision, the number of options must be small.
The small number of people who determine these options retain most of the political power.
- All methods of collective decision-making involve ambiguities and spoiler effects. All methods are vulnerable to manipulation and strategy. The sole exception is a majority vote between two non-negotiable options, like a vote on whether to end a meeting.
- A voter's preferences are difficult to quantify, and any simple method of doing so
(such as approval voting or ranked ballots) can only be a rough approximation.
Why can't elections handle a large number of options?
When there is a large number of choices, many problems emerge when everyone tries to choose at exactly the same time. Voters have to choose without knowing how everyone else is going to vote. This results in "vote splitting" that produces unpredictable and nonoptimal winners. It's also more difficult for candidates to run targeted campaigns, and for voters to find the candidates they prefer, if they can't operate at their own pace.
A common solution to this has been the two-round runoff election, where a few leading candidates are chosen from a large pool in a primary election, and a final winner is chosen in a second election. You could imagine that a three- or four-round runoff would be an even better way to prevent vote splitting and campaign confusion. Direct Representation can be seen as an extension of this idea, because it effectively uses a continuous runoff election to choose new legislators. Voters can make a new pledge at any time if they feel that their second-choice candidate is making more impressive progress toward membership in the legislature than their favorite. A candidate can win a seat at any time, given enough pledges. So DR is the ultimate solution to this problem with elections.
Wouldn't we have too many choices with DR?
Most Americans have gone shopping for a car, apartment, or breakfast cereal and faced
hundreds of options to choose from. Usually, everyone finds a satisfactory solution without
an unacceptable amount of effort - we usually ask friends for recommendations, do some research
on our own, read ads, and make a decision. Would you surrender this power of choice to
a system of shopping by vote?
What is the nature of the connection between legislators and constituents?
Under DR, legislators and their constituents would feel a stronger bond than they do now.
The two will share a common ideology, and voters would make a tangible contribution to
their legislators' power. Voters could retain the same legislator regardless of their location
or mobility, and regardless of complicated and arbitrary district boundaries. So a strong
loyalty can develop between the two.
This is complicated by the use of a secret ballot; voters cannot (and should not) publicly
prove who holds their proxy. Anyone can claim to be a legislator's constituent, so to some
extent legislators must be accountable to everyone - probably a valuable effect.
Couldn't the effect of DR be mimicked by PR?
PR is usually used with some form of districting to reduce the number of choices to a
manageable level. PR voting techniques simply can't efficiently handle the amount of choice
offered by DR: imagine ranking 100 candidates on a ballot! With so many choices, it makes
sense to just choose individually. (See the questions about elections that appear above.)
Isn't DR like corporate democracy, which is terrible?
Corporate shareholders are allowed to vote on various
management issues in proportion to the number of shares they hold, and
can assign proxies to have others vote for them. This mechanism is
almost useless because the existing management automatically receives the
proxies of those who don't vote. Management also has a great deal
of control over ballot access. Most information voters need to
make an informed decision is kept secret. So corporate democracy
is indeed terrible, but not because of its similarity to DR.
How would DR be implemented?
Use of DR would require a secure central database keeping track of
people's proxies. Voting would occur at a kiosk at a government office,
by mail using secure codes, or potentially over the internet. Though we
would want even greater safeguards for our government, corporations have
conducted proxy elections for decades, with billions of dollars at
stake. So DR would be feasible.
DR would be a substantial change from the current system, but it will not seem so radical after proportional and/or
interactive representation have been used at the local or state level.
- Local or State DR: Changes to state constitutions or city or county charters would
be necessary to allow for DR and perhaps expand the size of the legislative body.
- Federal DR: It would be best to implement DR nationwide.
However, if it is desirable to maintain the federal nature of the US government, it
would be best to implement DR only among larger states to choose each state's delegation to the House
of Representatives. Smaller states would use
In any case, amendments to the Constitution would be necessary.
Don't multiparty legislatures cause instability?
They can in some countries where the executive branch is selected by the
legislature. The separation of powers in our federal and state
governments would prevent such problems. There are actually many
multiparty legislatures in the world that are very stable.
Wouldn't DR preclude representation of local interests?
No, because people can and will choose representatives who live near them, live in a community with similar concerns,
or can otherwise represent their local interests. This has been demonstrated in at-large PR elections in Cambridge, MA.
People use their power of choice to ensure that their local interests are represented. This is
vastly preferable to election methods that
force this choice upon people, regardless of their other political interests.
Where did you get this great idea?
Direct Representation is not an entirely new concept. J. Francis Fisher and Simon Sterne made
similar proposals for the United States in the 1860's. This site combines ideas from this
older work with more modern concepts and packaging.