Me

Improving the Democratic System

I hereby suggest we make a very simple change to the democratic system, which I think will have great benefits. What I suggest is that the term of an elected official will be proportional to the margin by which the elections were won. Simple isn't it ?

There are three advantages to this:

1. It is more fair - I don't put too much emphasis on fairness, and I don't have much hopes the democratic system would produce a lot of fairness, but still. If the system is built to mirror the desires of the people, it seems only fair that the wider the margin is, the more strong the desire of the people is, and hence the longer the term at office should be.

2. It will be more popular by the people - i believe this system will sit better with people. Issues of illegitimacy of a candidate which won narrowly would not be that big.

3. It makes every vote counts - every vote you put will directly affect the government !!!

From all three, I actually thing that reason number 3 is the most important, as it will lead people to much more involvement.

As to technicality, I don't want to talk too much about it. But basically, you can have a formula, which would:
- minimum would be two years
- maximum would be six year
- actual term is a linear function between the two, when 0% margin gives you only 2 years, and 20% margin gives you six years.

I guess there are some disadvantages to this, specifically having a much less orderly cycle of elections and change, but I don't think this is really bad, and certainly dwarfs relative to the advantages.

posted by Me @ 2:46 AM