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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

Consider Switzerland:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy :

"Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. At the federal level, citizens can propose changes to the constitution (federal popular initiative) or ask for a referendum to be held on any law voted by the parliament.[16] Swiss citizens vote regularly on any kind of issue on every political level, such as financial approvals of a school house or the building of a new street, or the change of the policy regarding sexual work, or on constitutional changes, or on the foreign policy of Switzerland, four times a year"

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How does the education of policy function in practice?

I ask because in the UK we're planning a referendum on exiting the EU (or not). On most political issues I'd consider myself more well read than a great percentage of the population, but I don't feel in any way qualified to argue one way or another on this (I have a guy feeling, and I know which way I would probably vote, but really - that's not the right way to do things). I know that it will end up being driven by biased forces for political gain, like every other election / referendum held in the UK.

How does Switzerland devolve information to the public so they can make a genuine informed decision?

This is not the advantage that a democracy gives. A democracy makes it impossible to fuck any group that's sufficiently large to either be a majority or able to team up with another minority and make a majority.

You won't realize why this matters until you either study history, or look at how things work in countries like the UAE or China or other dictatorships.

If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ? (or vote invalid if the ballot is non-optional)

> If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ?

This is an idea I've been toying with. Whenever an election rolls around, I keep hearing people say things like "I don't care who you vote for, just vote." "People died for your right to vote." "The problem today is that people don't vote."

But I wonder whether the problem is that too many people vote. And mostly they don't do actual research, so they vote based on whatever's trickled down to them through the media they consume. This gives an advantage to whichever side can make itself sound most attractive in soundbites, which seems suboptimal.

That's the flip side of the point, I guess; you can't go against the obvious interests of a majority of citizens, but if you can manipulate an uninformed/prejudiced/scared majority, then you have a relatively free hand to abuse everybody. Hence the importance of informed voters.

The Swiss have so many referendums that they are always on very small, focused issues. Examples from the recent past:

• Should we buy new Gripon fighter jets?

• Should we build a new tunnel through the mountains?

• Should we expel criminals if they are non-Swiss?

• Should the central bank be required to buy gold to back a fraction of the money supply?

Because the issues are so much narrower than referendums in the UK tend to be, it's much easier and quicker to develop an opinion on them.

For people who don't care, they either don't vote (turnout is often ~30% though for the recent highly charged expulsion vote it was more like ~60%), or they vote how the government recommends they vote. Trust in government is very high here so that sort of delegation tends to work OK, and in fact the government wins most votes.

W.R.T. other ways people get informed, it's just the usual mechanisms. Leaflets, media coverage, discussion amongst friends and family. Billboard advertising campaigns notify people of upcoming votes and tend to be very simple. Almost invariably a poster that says something like, "More tax for farmers? NEIN" or "Better working conditions for the people? JA". I doubt they change anyone's minds but they are quite eyecatching.

It's not perfect.

We get a booklet explaining the voting issue at hand, things are also discussed in the media and on political parties websites.

If it's a referendum then both the referendum people and the government get pages to explain their point of view. If the government disagrees they often use scary words to make people vote against it.

If it's a constitution change you see the diff. Like any diff it's not always obvious how it inscribes itself in the bigger picture. The constitution is much larger than the us-one as it includes all sorts of things.

At the end of the booklet you also get to see what each political party (10-15 of them) would vote.

People use all of these sources to take a decision, putting different weights on different things. I think a lot of people just defer to what their preferred party recommends.

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