Apr 22 2011: The Swiss, who employ a participatory democracy allow and encourage citizens to take part in legislative decision making, even to the point of introducing legislation. They utilize a lot of referendums, some mandatory, and permit a number of ways to vote from the ballot box to electronic voting. I'm sure that our transportation systems will never be as punctual, or as functional but there's no reason that our governance system can't be. And you don't even have to get rid of the politicians but they will be marginalized..........and that's a good thing!!
Apr 22 2011: Unfortunately, since politicians would be involved in the decision to get rid of 'politicians', it just isn't going to happen. We really do have to eliminate partisan party politics though, and in Canada, an electoral system (first past the post), that generally misrepresents the way the electorate actually votes. And we need a proportional voting system so that we don't have a minority government that actually only garners less than 38% of the popular vote. We have two mainstream political parties (as they do in the USA), one marginal party, one mainly provincial party in Quebec that simply wants to separate from Canada, and one party that has no elected members of parliament. In the 2008 federal election Harper's conservatives formed a minority government with only 37.6% of the vote and that gave them 143 out of 308 seats. The lowly Green Party garnered close to a million votes but elected nobody. The separatist Bloc Quebecois received 1.4 million votes taking 49 seats, while the New Democrats got 1.1 million votes more than the BQ but won only 37 seats. This is wrong, unfair and absurd from every approach. And the results? -- low voter turnouts, apathy and cynicism, and a disfunctional system of governance. Oops, forgot to mention another result -- our fourth federal election in seven years at about $300 million a pop.But there is hope -- Switzerland. Google it, I urge you. They also have five political parties but they have a system of participatory democracy. Their political structure allows and encourages citizens to actively participate in government, and even in the creation of legislation. The Swiss federation and their idea of direct democracy reflects the importance the country attaches to freedom of choice and self determination. A decentralized division of power and attempts to solve issues at their lowest level, called the subsidiarity principle, are the cornerstones of the Swiss confederation. They use a lot of referendums.
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A comment on Conversation: Why don't we use technology to have a real Direct Democracy?
A reply on Conversation: What about doing away with politicians and voting online for all issues?