Direct democracy will restore power to the people
It is no secret that our electoral system is broken, and all sides seem to have an idea about how to fix it. The parties who feel they are underrepresented in parliament demand proportional representation; those who are wary of party power push for preferential ballots; still others call for more or fewer representatives.
Some of the most recent fallout from our broken electoral system comes from the 52 per cent of Torontonians who did not vote for Rob Ford, despite his election as mayor. Despite Ford winning the election fair and square under the current rules of the game, people still feel that their voices will not be heard and their priorities will be ignored.
But imagine for a minute a place where people did not give up their political power on election day, where politicians were continuously accountable to voters and not lobbyists or donors. A magical world where the complexities of human opinion did not have to be compromised when deciding who to vote for — where you could support contracting out garbage collection and at the same time oppose eliminating the streetcars. Such a place exists, not merely in the dreams of radical democrats, but in many different and diverse constituencies around the world. What does sunny, debt-ridden California have in common with the snow-capped, wealthy tax haven of Liechtenstein? What does neutral, mountainous Switzerland have in common with small, Puritan New England towns? All these places practise, in one form or another, direct democracy — a system that empowers the people to be the lawmakers.
In California — along with 23 other U.S. states — citizens who can get a specified amount of enough signatures in an allotted time frame can result in a standing law being scrutinized and possibly voted down; or an issue the legislature refuses to confront can be decided by the people it affects. In Swiss communes, and many New England towns, all political matters are decided by residents who show up to town meetings to vote on an issue-by-issue basis, cutting politicians and political parties from the process altogether. Democratic reformers like Ralph Nader and Mike Gravel have been pushing for the adoption in the United States of what amounts to a citizen’s veto, whereby, after a bill passes the legislature, it is put to the people for an up-or-down vote deciding its fate. All these systems have pros and cons and — most likely — the best system would combine aspects of each of them. What system we adopt is for the voters to decide. Of course, direct democracy has been lampooned by those who feel the public will agree to anything — most famously by Rick Mercer who started a petition to force then-Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day to change his first name to Doris. Likewise, criticism has come from those who oppose measures such as California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in that state. However, what people seem to ignore when talking about direct democracy in Canada or Toronto is the fact that if such a system were adopted, it would be established that Charter-protected rights could not be put to a vote; likewise, any law would have to apply equally to every citizen. In addition, rules could be established that force initiatives to address only a single issue and do so within a limited word count. Likewise, before people jump to conclusions about how others would vote — especially when looking at citizen empowerment on a local level — we need to really look at how we view each other. Do you really think your community, friends, and neighbours are so at odds with the way you think and so devoted to doing the wrong thing?
Ultimately, what it boils down to is this: do we trust each other? Either you believe people are good enough and smart enough and committed enough to be empowered to run their own lives, or you think the people you interact with every day are stupid, brutish, and need to be controlled. Either we believe in democracy or we don’t. Proportional representation, preferential ballots, and other electoral reforms make a lot of promises about fixing our broken system, but ultimately, only direct democracy offers power to the people.—David Woolley
Direct democracy is not a workable form of governance
Modern voting, purists would say, is a pale imitation of what democracy should be. We vote too infrequently and on too few issues. Choosing representatives is important, but we should also be empowered to vote directly on crucial issues through plebiscites and referenda. Voting could be made cheaper and more efficient if we implemented electronic voting, particularly a method which would allow voters to cast their ballots directly from their homes. The result, they hope, would be greater satisfaction among citizens about decisions made by government because they participated in reaching them — but also, and more importantly — better decisions.
This view is based on two arguments. The first is that our democratic principles demand that we allow as many people as possible to participate in decisions which affect them. Those who hold this view argue that the best way to achieve this goal is to let citizens vote directly on policy proposals, particularly those which are especially costly or otherwise significant. The second is based on the presumption that ordinary people are collectively wiser than their representatives ever can be. For this reason, people should be allowed to vote on proposals directly to provide a check against bad decisions.
The principled argument is intuitively right. If we believe that people have an equal stake in the state, then they should have an equal role in governing it. However, this view is inconsistent with the modern world. While new technologies might well allow more people to participate in political life, they will not reduce the breadth and depth of proposals that governments will be forced to consider. It is precisely because of this complexity that we elect representatives on our behalf to govern for us. Important proposals are more complex than everyday ones, which is why it is even more important that we allow our representatives to debate and decide between them.
This is not to say that people should have no role in determining what government does. However, the current system provides a good opportunity for influencing what it does by allowing us to vote regularly for representatives and at the federal and provincial level, indirectly for a party. What we should be concerned with is the quality of our representation, including the electoral system by which we choose our representatives. We should also pay great attention to ways we can improve access to our representatives and the services that their offices provide to citizens.
Furthermore, we can draw on new methods of informed direct democracy, such as citizens’ assemblies, to transform public consultation from a token exercise to a necessity. Rather than asking citizens to make direct decisions about complex issues, citizens’ assemblies ask a small number of randomly-selected individuals who are given a crash course on the issue to make recommendations about the priorities and values that should guide decision-making. An assembly on Toronto’s budget might express a preference for citywide programs over neighbourhood-specific ones, while one on the TTC might emphasize speed improvements rather than suburban expansion.
The pragmatic argument that, fundamentally, people are better at making decisions than politicians, also seems intuitively right. Toronto’s history is replete with governments making bad decisions, such as preferring the Sheppard subway over the proposed subway to the airport along Eglinton, or the proposed Spadina expressway. Both Ontario’s and Canada’s histories are filled with similar examples. However, there are likely other situations in which voters would have made worse decisions than politicians did. Likewise, direct democracy leaves little room for governments to make unpopular, but necessary decisions, such as the harsh cuts that the Chrétien government made in the mid 1990s to quell Canada’s swelling budget deficit.
While people might be less likely to make bad decisions than politicians and more prepared to take ownership of them, people are not necessarily equipped with the information they need to make decisions on important issues. Even a major public education campaign would do little to ensure that people are making informed votes. This can lead to a situation such as in California, where decades of ballot initiatives have progressively robbed the government of the capacity to raise taxes, which has led to a deep budgetary crisis.
By involving citizens through better public consultation and more robust civil society organizations, they can exert significant influence on government.—Patrick Baud
