They're starting to see "internet people" as a significant voting block.
To solidify the deal, I suggest all who can vote, do so at the next opportunity. The long term gains for rewarding this "internet aware" behavior will be massive for us all.
To solidify the deal, I suggest all who can vote, do so at the next opportunity. The long term gains for rewarding this "internet aware" behavior will be massive for us all.
Too many people confuse direct democracy with majoritarianism. The same checks and balances that exists with representative democracy can also exist with the direct kind. The constitution & the courts can still limit popular will.
One thing is for sure, there is no way SOPA like bills could pass with direct democracy or popular veto.
This kind of democracy is what killed Socrates. No, really, the old Athenian system allowed citizens to participate much more directly, so when a moral panic started they could do really nasty stuff.
Now, perhaps I'm being unfair. If you dig a bit deeper, you'll learn that Socrates was officially killed for impiety, and corrupting the young. Unofficially, he was killed for inspiring the Thirty Tyrants. It's debatable whether or not he was in any way responsible for their actions - Plato says no (though Plato was heavily biased) - but it seemed probable to a lot of people at the time. They couldn't get actually punish him for inspiring the Tyrants, because immunity was granted as part of a peace treaty, but when Socrates went ahead preaching his military dictatorship to a whole new generation, people got a bit upset.
Sortition is actually quite a good idea - get a representative bunch of people, and let them debate the issue. It's a jury system. You don't want politicians to decide things, because they are the worst kind of decision makers (or so some people say). You don't want the uninformed populous to make decisions, because they are uniformed. So you get a sample of the populous, let them gather information, and then they can make an informed decision. Sure, Athens did some barbaric shit. But so did practically every other civilization at the time. The only thing to watch out for is people protecting their franchise - Athens stayed quite xenophobic and misogynistic, as the old Athenian men were the only ones who could vote, and didn't want their power being diluted.
I'd say "they've started" more than "they're starting", I remember having seen a few AMAs and campaign presence on reddit in the last 6 months or so, mostly by kind-of-internet-aligned challengers.
On the other hand, if the current efforts fail it may significantly set this trend back.
Still, it's pretty great being able to witness a transition of this magnitude (if it succeeds). We truly live in interesting times.