Poverty affects your ability to participate in a democracy. That sucks. But it is a fact. Therefore, if I can find a way in which E-Democracy can provide democratic representation for more people in poverty than are covered under the existing system, then I consider that a victory. Is that logic horribly flawed?
I've asked twice if you have any stats on how many people in poverty currently vote, so I'm going to go with the first thing I google, wow - it's a horrible paper, but it suggests
5% of people in poverty currently vote - that sounds about right, let's run with that then.
You didn't address the issue of informed consent or the issues of people understanding the proxy system.
I'll try again then.
"Instead of picking a president who you want to fight for various issues on your behalf, votes on issues are now made online and everyones vote is equal. If you have access to a computer you can vote on individual issues yourself, if you don't have computer access then you can proxy your vote to a trusted individual or organisation who will add your vote to theirs - e.g. if you proxy your vote to The United Way, they'll only vote on issues in order to try and reduce homelessness/poverty/etc. You cannot sell your vote, but you can switch your proxy vote at any time."
Sure - not everyone will be able to understand the concepts in those three sentences, but - crucially - at least 6% will.
Let's face it - what percentage of people today could pass a civics test, never mind just those who have lived their entire lives in poverty? If you're expecting me to come up with a solution that will be 100% perfect, then I will fail, but only because that expectation is entirely unreasonable.
You also haven't addressed my point of people not being able to find transportation for basics like shopping for food yet you think somehow they are going to get all the way across the city to the library to participate in your e-democracy, that they don't even understand. You also haven't addressed the issue of cities having the capacities to engage the disadvantaged to educate them and to get them to places with computers. So how do you address the capacity issues?
If they proxy-vote to The United Way then they'll be better represented then they are currently. They don't need to even see a computer to do this.
That's how I address all of those issues. It's not in the form you're asking for because fully re-educating an entire population prior to implementing a new form of Governance is an entirely ridiculous benchmark. America would still be a British Colony.
Lastly, this idea of changing you vote whenever you want to invites a whole host of problems. Elected local officials could be recalled at any time. You would make local govenment TOO fluid, and nothing would get done. Government does require some level of institutional knowledge. Fighting gridlock with complete fluidity is not the way to go.
You're conflating two ideas -- how to elect officials, and how to direct those officials once they are in place. As you point out, terms for elected officials are quite useful in practice.
Hmmm. I wonder how much I could sell my proxy for............
What, assuming you change the laws about selling your vote first?
Okay - very little. It's a single vote. A corporation would need to buy-off a majority of the population in order to pull that off, so it'd hardly be underhand or secret.
But yeah - the law would need to be very clear that votes cannot be sold, and individuals cannot be bound (legally or otherwise) to vote in a particular way.
