Democracy Charade

[D. Mokarii]

If the writers of the Declaration of Independence were correct in claiming that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed", then wouldn't asking the governed logically become the ONLY just method to govern?

Democracy is the word for doing so, but misfortunately, our ballots seldom actually ask truly pertinent questions for self-governance. Our ballots are mainly just lesser-of-two-evil candidate choices from parties funded largely by the same super-rich puppeteers (as some founding fathers worried would happen with parties). Even worse are the rapidly growing UNJUST POWERS of the bullies predicted by President Eisenhower approximately 6 and a half minutes into his farewell address.

Here's a link to an excellent article discussing some of the basics of electing candidates. I highly recommend reading it in detail.

www.ericaklarreich.com/election%20selection%20b&w%20compressed.PDF

Why aren't we already implementing some of the easy, yet fundamentally superior, voting methods in that article? I wish the democratic party could live up to its name by adapting some of the ideas in the above article into their process of selecting their own candidates.

Simple majority rule can't be any worse than whatever this is we have now. A tragic example of the consequences of our flawed (e.g. electoral college) system occurred back in the year 2000 when, despite lots of "dark" money, advertising lies, voter caging and other voter suppression techniques; more total votes were cast for president-elect Gore, yet the system still delivered a the wrong "leader". The current illusion of democracy gives society's worst bullies huge (and still growing!) advantages, possibly beyond what Eisenhower predicted.

Practically all actual improvements to society (e.g. many of the changes called for by the largest protests) will be significantly easier to implement, last longer, and experience less corruption if we implement a real democracy FIRST!

[D. Mokarii]

Hello,

The link to the excellent article about voting systems/methods in the original post has been moved to:

pressfolios-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/story/story_pdf/145548/1455481434385635.pdf


More degradation than improvement of our obviously fragile democracy (charade) seems to have happened since that article was published. 

Does anyone know of other good articles about election methods?


Approval Voting has become my favorite simple and quick-to-implement, voting method for governments interested in "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" in the sense of the 3rd sentence of the Declaration of Independence:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

By simply counting up votes for ALL the candidates that each voter approves of, Approval Voting always elects the person of proposition with the most "consent of the governed" and therefore, POWER.  Governments with other systems are all weaker.

Extremists and bullies would so rarely succeed under Approval Voting that they would be wise not to even try.  Thus, people smart enough not to "throw their hat in the ring" of other systems might offer their services to we the people.

It's actually (eerily) fascinating that the simplicity of Approval Voting is still hardly mentioned in the press. 
What's up with that?
Surely, at least a political party could decide on its own to carry out its primary with approval voting as a first step.