Hacker News Reader

The most civilized method to influence policy has always been the act of voting.

That doesn't always work though, since citizens aren't given a vote on every policy issue[0]. Also, in the UK at the moment we have had a long stream of unelected governments, which make policy that isn't in the last manifesto that had a vote.

[0]: I'm not saying they should be, since that's what political representatives are for.

Citizens should vote more often, Switzerland shows a good example, be we can go even further than that.

I don't get this "voting every 4-6 years" story in most past of the world. This leads either to the political apathy or to the riots, like it is now in France and in Belgium.

We have to have a habit of voting in order to be efficient at it. For the same reason, my spam filters are relaxed and every day I read a few spam messages that slip though, to stay alert of what the spam is, and how it changes over time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com