New York Senator Sanders teams up with the Public Banking Institute to educate New Yorkers about the benefits of public banking. Victoria Alexander assists in the presentation.
Category: Running Government
Initiative, Referendum and Recall
An initiative enables citizens to bypass their state legislature by placing proposed statutes or amendments on the ballot. In the direct initiative process, qualified proposals go directly on the ballot. In the indirect process, the proposal must be approved by legislature first. A referendum is a measure that appears on the ballot. Legislatures are often…
Running Government
How would switching from a purely Representative Democracy to one in which the people have more direct power? We might keep Representatives, Senators, and other elected officials in office, but grant them almost no power, insofar as they would only play the roles of bill sponsors, debaters, advisors, administrators and diplomats. Each representative might be…
Public Banking
A public bank is essentially a nonprofit organization, owned by a local, state or federal government that manages its own checking/savings accounts. The Bank of North Dakota, which has been in operation since 1919 with great success, deposits all tax and fee revenue in the state bank and uses it to to finance public infrastructure,…
Protection for Minorities
In a Direct Democracy the majority vote might be opposed to the minority vote, and the majority is not always right. The majority might vote for racist policies or wars of aggression or legislation that goes against the moral view of a minority. How does a Direct Democracy protect the minority? A Direct Democracy which…
Simplify Legislation
The “One Subject at a Time” Act currently before Congress and the Senate proposes legislation that would be needed for an effective Direct Democracy. Each bill or joint resolution would be required to have a short title that clearly describes the subject (no legislation could be called something vague, such as the “Patriot Act”). Under…
Mob rule
The votes of an uninformed majority are more likely to overwhelm the votes of better informed voters in a system in which people vote for politicians/parties, not actual legislation. Currently, we give over the power to make decisions to leaders who are often elected on the basis of name recognition alone, or party affiliation alone,…
Separation of Business and State
Corporate leaders become politicians; politicians become corporate leaders. Weapons contractors lobby politicians for more war. Prison contractors lobby for tougher sentencing. Private intelligence companies advise the State Department on foreign policy, policy which in turn benefits the intelligence companies. The Central Intelligence Agency hires Amazon to store sensitive information in its cloud. The largest corporations…
Campaign Financing
Should the U.S. follow the example of several other countries and make paid campaign ads on TV Illegal? What about spending any money at all on a campaign, referendum, or lobbyist? How would democracy fare if there were no campaign donations, no paid advertising, no paid campaign staff or paid petition gatherers? Only volunteers? Or…
Online Voting
Online elections would make it very convenient for people to participate in a Direct Democracy. However, given that election fraud is more likely to occur with electronic voting, especially with machines made by Diebold and ES&S, there is room for concern that online votes can also be hacked. Both election fraud and voter fraud might…
Ranked voting
Most developed nations have multiple political parties, not just two. Protecting voters against the “wasted third-party vote” syndrome could be accomplished with ranked choice voting. See Fair Vote, the non-profit organization that is leading the charge to pass RCV nationally. With ranked choice voting, if your first choice doesn’t win, your vote goes to your…
Robbing Peter to pay Paul
Some are against Direct Democracy because they fear that poor people, who outnumber the rich, will vote for more government welfare services for themselves and higher taxes for the rich. Taxes Funding for government activities does not have to be provided by an income tax and was not provided by income tax before 1913. Directly…
Privacy
The Library Bill of Rights affirms the “ethical imperative to provide unrestricted access to information and to guard against impediments to open inquiry. When users recognize or fear that their privacy or confidentiality is compromised, true freedom of inquiry no longer exists.” In a library (physical or virtual), the right to privacy is the right…
Volunteer Support for Warfare and Welfare
Partisan groups are often divided over the issue of spending tax dollars on war and spending tax dollars on welfare. What if decisions about going to war, sending weapons, or funding police actions could be made by the people instead of Congress or the President? What if those who voted for war were expected to…
Examples of Direct Democracy
In Iceland, the Pirate Party’s core policies include direct democracy, transparency, civil rights, the right to self-determination, public access to information and responsible decision making. The core policy text forms the basis for all policymaking. The online voting system is the primary method through which Pirates settle disputes and reach consensus on policies. In the United States,…
Reduce the Number of Bills
In 2015, Congress voted on about 600 bills. Perhaps not all these bills deserve public attention, if even the attention of Congress. For example, Congress voted on whether or not to rename a post office in Staten Island, New York. Could decisions like this be made by the Post Office? or by the people in…
Correlating Taxation and Voting
Direct Democracy cannot work if citizens are allowed to vote the country into deeper debt. What if all approved programs and services had to be correlated with a source of funding? Public works might be paid for by fiat money, as well as partially supported by workfare. Tariffs might pay for basic government operations. Hospital…
Free Press
A true democracy depends upon an availability of information and diversity of viewpoints. When virtually all information sources–television, radio, newspapers, magazines, book publishing, movie production–are owned by a few corporations, there is little opportunity for diversity, dissent, or criticism of the corporations or the political group they may favor. Censorship may occur for a variety…
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