анонимный вопрос
What is the downvote mainly used for in politics today? These are dislikes under harmful bills, petitions to repeal harmful laws, rallies demanding the government’s resignation, actions like egging, and so on. In other words, it is a standard tool of direct, rather than representative, democracy.
Let’s try to imagine what the consequences of implementing the downvote for representative democracy would look like.
An elective body, a dozen candidates are running, all of them appear on the ballot; the voter comes to the polling station and gives dislikes to everyone they definitely do not wish to see in the specified position. The candidate with the minimum number of dislikes wins.
What are the downsides of such a system?
- The chance of victory sharply increases for a “slippery Joe” who hasn’t managed to offend anyone because nobody really knows who he is. Politicians will compete for the image of the most featureless nobody.
- A nobody might turn out to be lacking agency and simply hand over the levers of real control to their puppet master. We get the same result, just from a different angle, and with an even greater dilution of responsibility for political decisions.
What are the pluses?
- The concept of a spoiled ballot disappears. An empty ballot means all candidates are liked. A scribbled-out one means none are liked.
- No candidate with even a moderately high anti-rating will pass; that is, unpopular measures in a previous position effectively kill a public political career, even if there is a significant support group.
- Voter turnout increases sharply: for the pleasure of giving a public politician a dislike, even the paralyzed will drag themselves to the polling station.
- The fear of drastic measures will ensure that the state becomes far more inactive, and that is exactly what we libertarians want.
So, I approve of the proposed system for improving representative democracy. It’s just a pity that neither you nor I will live to see this wonderful time…
