Representative Democracy:
A Slippery Hold on Freedom

Last Update: 1 Deceember, 2023

Topic: What is this Issue Concerning?

This is concerning the system of government known as Representative Democracy, ie. supposed rule of the majority of the People by elected representatives, usually by secret ballot.

Representative democracy is touted as the best possible system of government, but is it?

Importance: Why You Should Care

If there's something wrong with our system of Government it means our society is going the wrong way at a systemic level and is in serious short-term and especially long-term danger.

Related Topics:

Definitions:

  • Respresentative democracy, which is the most common type of demoracy in the world by far, is a system whereby people of each local area elect a representative who votes and acts for them in the legislative body, for a fixed term, without need of any further approval by the local community during that time.

  • Political 'Good': What is a 'good' and 'bad' political system? In our view, a good political system, and the direction of improvement, is towards greater preservation of human rights, life, and individual freedoms, in that order of decreasing importance.

  • Voter Duty: Voters in a democracy have a duty to vote, to understand the issues they vote on, to compare the policy platforms of each and every candidate on an equal footing before making a decision, and to make that decision for the most long-term good of the jurisdiction.

Prejudices on this Issue:

Any criticism of democracy is popularly assumed to be promotion of Communism (because it is the main competing political system in the last century), and therefore tends to be met with a defensive hostility.

Our Intent in this Discussion:

This article is not about promoting communism or its many horrors. We recognize democracy as the best system we know of, but we object to it being both very poorly implemented and with those flaws socially promoted as so perfect a system of justice and freedom that we need not aspire for better. Rather conventional respresentative democratic systems tend to be so flawed, on so many levels, as to be effectively a kind of unrecognized dictatorship.

Related Issues

Problems with our democratic system, especially in functioning more like an unrecognized dictatorship, are closedly related to recognition of a Shadow Government.

BackGround Understanding

There is an effort, in designing systems of self-governance, to avoid dictatorship, because although it is the best form of government so long as the leader is humble, wise, and good (eg. Jesus Christ), it is the most dangerous to become abusive under the pride and selfishness all too common in humanity. Even if a good ruler can be found, their successor, typically brought up in priviledge, might have a very different character. Through the failures of dictatorship, insane and cruel people have been allowed to rule in history, and we must work to ensure that it can never happen again.

Assumptions of Democracy:

The democratic system assumes certain things for it to come to a good end for society. Let's attempt to write them out:

  1. That the People want to have a meaningful say in the direction of their government rather than be completely dictated to. This means that, given a convenient opportunity to vote, they will always vote, because it is important to them.

  2. That the People will only vote for what they believe to be good for the long-term good of the nation (or region related to the election). They will not vote solely for personal gain, and will certainly not vote for what they recognize as evil, not even a lesser evil.

  3. That every citizens cares about every issue their Government must decide on.

  4. That the People will research issues to a thorough understanding, current and historical, and seek out and compare all options offered, with information from diverse sources, before making any decision. It takes a commitment of time and effort, but since there is no other way to make a fair decision, voters will make the effort.

  5. That the People will not vote based on loyalty but select whoever offers the best ideas at the time.

  6. That the People are too smart to be scared into approving measures against their interest.

  7. That politicians will offer enough contrast to voters that voters can choose between any different direction on any important issue.

  8. That politicians will never collude with the Establshment agains the People

  9. That referendums will always be called on any critical Government policy decision such as whether or not to order everyone to stay home because of a virus.

  10. That the Government cannot make itself a dictatorship, or otherwise award itself dictatorial powers, not even if they declare an emergency.

  11. That human rights are inalienable: not suspendable in any way by Government.

  12. That words spoken by politicians are their own words, not written for them.

  13. That Government informes the People promptly of the full truth on all issues, so that the People have the right foundation to decide things in the future.

  14. That the People either cannot or will not approve anything destructive to the quality of life of future generations.

So What's the Problem?

The problem is that respresentative democracy is a terrible failure in terms of ultimately achieving what is good (by the above definition): so far the results are runaway public debt, decreasing human rights, and decreasing public morality. Although not quite as bad as communism, representative democracy has been leading us far closer to atheist dictatorship than our society has been admitting.

It's time to recognize the flaws of representative democracy:

  1. Systemic Failures in Represantative Democracy:

    1. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Issue Agglomeration: To vote on any issue, a voter is forced to approve or disapprove a candidate's platform decisions on all issues simultaneously. This frustrates the ability for voters to guide Government policy in these ways:

      1. It prevents voters from sending a clear message about which issues matter most to them. Rather this intent is lead to speculation. It's never clear which policy position of perhaps a hundred in the platform guided a voter's decision to vote for that candidate-platform, and it's left open to speculation. For example, a politician may think they received a vote due to their position on taxation, but actually it was due to their position on war.

      2. It often forces voters to vote against their wishes on some policies in order to express their views on others.

      3. It forces voters to vote on many more issues than they know or care about. It's naive to think that every voter has heart enough and time enough to care about and research every issue the Government touches. The moral way to handle this would be to allow them to vote only on the issues they know and care about. Unfortunaetly, all election policies are pre-decided for every issue in one platform per canddiate.

      4. It often forces voters to actually vote against their desire on some issues to express their desire on others. In reality, the issues are so many and the candidate-platofrms to choose between so few that it's mathematically expected that, the vast majority of the time, a policy platform will have some policy positions you agree with and others which are contrary to what you want, and it's mathematically expected that there will be too few candidates to solve this problem for you. For example, in an election with a hundred policies being decided, what are the chances that, out of 5 candidate-platforms, one of them will match your wishes on every issue? Not good. For example, if you want to vote for one platform which promises lower taxation, it might also approve war, which you are against. What do you do? You either vote to approve lower taxation and war, or you vote for another candidate-platform which does not offer lower taxation but may promise peace, or you don't vote at all. You are forced to either silence or confound yourself by how the system is designed.

    2. [Critical Failure] No Guarantee of Policy Contrast between Election Candidates

      Democracy assumes that when options are brought to voters, there is some difference between them, such that the choice translates into a meaningful choice of direction for the community or nation, instead of a meaningless endorsement between options which are identical or nearly identical.

      However there is no requirement for the options presented to voters to have any contrast at all. If all the parties agree to take one side on an issue, for example, then voters won't be offererd any option for the other side of the issue. For example, during COVID-19 crisis elections, typically no option to stop the social restrictions was offered by any candidate of the most extablished political parties.

      Worse, a phenomenon has emerged, in longstanding representative democracies, of the most popular politilcal parties having styles of policy and governmance which are amazingly similar, differing only in minor points, such that whichever is elected the governance is very similar without needing to break any promises.

    3. [Critical Failure] No 'None of the Above' Option. Voters should be able to express if none of the options offered are acceptable. Our democratic system should not assume that one of the options given to voters must always be what voters want.

    4. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Election candidates decide the issues in each election in practice. Although in theory election candidates do have some incentive to offer options on the issues which voters care most about, candidates can also choose to silence some issues completely (which is most effective when all or all the leading candidates do it). For example, it is not been uncommon for municipal election candidates to be silent on the issue of stopping drinking water fluoridation, despite it being a controversial issue.

      When candidates, rather than voters, decide what 'the issues' are to offer options on in the election, that undemocratic decision is even more important than having a choice of option on what issues are offered. To compare it with deciding on a restaurant dinner, it would be like being told that you can order anything you want on the menu, so long as it is one salad and one desert, while the main course is not considered an issue you get get served but not get to decide.

    5. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Typically no obligation of Elected Officials to keep their election campaign promises and moreover typically being free to do the exact opposite.

      6. A recent excample is Ukraine president Zelensky: he was elected on a peace platform (notice how the news article quickly justifies his 'transformation'), even promising to negotiate directly with Russian president Putin, but in office he rejected a peace deal before the February 2022 invasion, and another one early after the invasion which his own delegation already signed, he made peace talks with Putin actually illegal, and he's often solicited and received military support for the war from other nations.

      Presumably it's because voters normally have no recourse if leaders break or even do the exact opposite of what they promised in an election, the practice has become common. News media has come to develop various and now familiar euphamisms to describe these betrayals, such as: 'u-turn', 'reversal', 'backtrack', 'walk back' or 'flip-flop'.

      This ability to do even the exact opposite of what was promised in the election campaign, even in matters of war, renders the election process meaningless, because you are literally electing a dictator who can do whatever they want despite whatever they told you.

      Some other examples:

    6. [Critical Failure] Ability of Represetnative-Democracy Government to bind the Public in secret contracts. For example, COVID-19 vaccine contracts, between Government and manufacturers, although signed by Government on behalf of the Public, they were typically kept secret from the Public (no right to read them in unredacted form). The idea that you can represent a people, to bind them in contracts they're not even permitted to read, may be legal, but it is not moral, and it is not democratic. Rather it is extremely dangerous.

    7. [Critical Failure] No Obligation for Government to Offer Referendums on Any Issue or Decision

      8. Although democracies typically have fixed timeframes for elections, once elected, the representatives have no further need to ask voters permission again for anything: not even to attack another country, nor to take up emergency (dictatorial) powers. For example, when Ontario, Canada government awarded itself dictatorial powers and suspended approximately half our human rights with lockdowns and mandates, on excuse of COVID-19, they never put it to voters, and it was said that they don't need to, that this is how our so-called 'democracy' works.

    8. [Critical Failure] Ability of Government, Courts, or Internal Political Party Committees to Block Candidates from Running for Leadership or Office

      9. If certain people are blocked by the Establishment from running for election, it's not a free election. Rather the pre-vote screening process may be a way to ensure that voters are only permitted to choose between candidates who are allied with the Establishment and its goals.

    9. [CRITICAL FAILURE] No Government obligation to be permanently bound by referendum results from voters. For example, notice the following wording from page 9 of the 2022 Voters’ Guide - Ontario municipal council and school board elections makes 'no' results of a referendum not permanently binding:

      10. In other words, the Government may do exactly what the People voted 'no' to, but they must wait 4 years to do it.

    10. [CRITICAL FAILURE] No Rapid-Referendum System

      11. A common excuse for not offering a referendum on something is that the leaders needed to act quickly; that there was no time.

      It's typical that these urgent decisions are also some of the most impacting to the nation, such as a decision to go to war or not.

      In a political system which still uses paper ballots only, and which takes months to organize through local polls, it's true that there often isn't enough time to hear back from voters on issues which do need an urgent decision. Sometimes there is, but sometimes there's not.

      Nevertheless a rapid-referendum system could be put in place, in this computerized age, in advance of problems, if the political will existed to ask the People for a decision on events which happen quickly: if they truly wanted the People to decide. If Government can find a way for us to file taxes online they can find a way for us to submit votes online.

      The fact that Government has shown no interest to implement such a system, rather repeatedly using this excuse of 'no time to ask voters' to make critical national decisions without voter input, means that many of the biggest decisions are typically and effectively put outside of the input of voters.

    11. [CRITICAL FAILURE]: The party with the most votes not always being the party which forms the government. Depending how the electoral system, anti-democratic flaws such as the first-past-the-post candidate election system in separate ridings and the ability for losing parties to cooperate to form a minority government, can keep the party which the most citizens voted for out of governance. For example, this actually happened in Canada in both the 2021 and 2019 federal elections, where in both cases the Conservative party had the most citizen votes, but the Liberal party, with the support of the NDP party, was able to form the government.

    12. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Elected Representatives Voting on Unread Legislation: Voters not required to understand or read the policies they give their consent for, but they vote more on concepts and it is the legislators' job to finalize the specific wording of each law they pass, which can undergo many revisions before it is passed. Unfortunately legislators are not required to even read the laws they vote on and bind the Public into, even though that is their job. Even for representatives with the best intentions, sometimes the proposed legislation is just too long to read even once, nevermind interpret or research, in the time they have before they must vote on it. The end result is binding the Public into laws that few even know what they are until they are passed. This is a far cry from the moral principle of binding the Public only into laws which are moral and necessary for peace. It should be illegal to bind someone else into laws which you haven't even read.

    13. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Bilateral Responsibiltiy Failure: A major problem with representative democracy is that if something goes morally wrong with the governance, usually nobody, literally no one, is held responsible for it if it was an election issue. The politicians' defense is typically that they are doing the will of the People (who voted approval for that policy platform), and the People voting by secret ballot typically accept no responsibility since lack of voter responsibility seems implied by the secret ballot system (legally it is, morally it is not). Even when voters re-elect someone who already did many tyrannical things during their term of office (emergency powers, lockdowns, mandates, etc), the next time he does tyrannical things they blame that Government not themselves for electing a known tyrant. For example, most Ontarians blamed the Ford government for a major labour dispute in November, despite re-electing him after his COVID-19 tyranny in June 2022 (article Nov. 6, 2022 Poll finds 6 of 10 Ontarians blame Ford government for labour disruptions): why complain when you re-elect clear tyranny?.

      Some problems, such as public debt, are totally out of control because neither governent officials nor voters consider themselves responsible to every pay back the borrowing.

      A system where decisions are being made but no one specifically is considered responsible is very dangeorus for quality decision to be made.

    14. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Truth Sequestering: Government operational habits tend to involve a lot of secrecy from the Public, even in levels of information classification. Unfortunaetly for democracy, the People cannot be expected to make the right decisions on issues if the truth is withheld from them on those issues. The only way a system like this could work in practice is if the Public is never allowed to actually make the decisions on the issues where the truth is withheld from them. It indicates that the election process is just for show.

    15. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Party association of political respresenatives. Although this has a minor convenience benefit of quickly identifying what kinds of policies each candidate in different ridings stand for, rather than knowing your candidate individually, it has major costs to democracy, including that:

      1. Party association makes the political candidate obligated to the party leader first before constituents and all other considerations in their political actions. Effectively they are obligated to vote how their leader, not their constituents, tell them to vote (or by ejected from the party). This means they cannot represent their consitituents' wishes.

      2. It's an overconcentration of power towards the few or one which the democratic system seems not to have intended: Party association makes the entire legislature of hundreds of elecxted officials effectively function (and pass laws) at the whim of one person: the political party with a majority of seats. It means the Government functions as dictatorship of limited term under the label of democracy. It means that all of the other officials are extraneous bench-warmers, which is not only a taking away of power from them, but grossly wastes public money to fund them all.

      3. It makes it eacy for incompetent people to be elected to public office. When voting for a party, rather than the merits of an individual candidate, voters are forced to vote for literally any candidate in their riding with the desire party affiliation. Even if a horse was put as the represenetative for the political party you want to vote for, you would then be forced to vote for the horse. However inappropriate or incompetent beings shouldn't be elected to public office and authority over others.

    16. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Representatives May Unilaterally Award Themselves 'Emergency' (Dictatorial) Powers: Emergency powers are a mechanism whereby democratic government systems assume (non-democratic) dictatorial powers, usually on the excuse that there is some dire need to do so.

      Emergency powers have no rightful place in a democracy. They are inherently counter-democratic. Furthermore, no one has authority to grant them, since since no one in the population has authority to dictate, and it's the population which elected that Government. Put another way, the representativs were elected with limited powers, and that doesn't give them the right to award themselves more powers without at least voter say-so. It's an usurp of power.

      The problem becomes only more dangerous the longer it goes on, in particular there is a tendency of Governments not to surrender emergency powers when they are assumed, no matter how temporary they are promised to be.

    17. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Representative Prerogative to Ignore Constituent Wishes Completely.

      So-called elected 'representatives' usually have no legal obligation to follow the wishes of their constituents and are typically free to not only ignore such any expressions, and even all consitutent correspondence, but are typically free to legislate directly against the will of the consitituents whom they supposedly represent.

      This makes the whole concept of political representation a complete fallacy (or, being a deliberate deception, a lie). Yes, you elect someone, but after that they effectively become your dictator for the duration of their term.

      Representative democracy systems, as typically implemented today, are systems by which the People give recurring consent to be ruled by dictatorship.

    18. Atheism Incentive. Religion stands as potential adversaries with Government, capable of criticizing and rallying the People against Government. In response of this threat to dictatorship, Government controls taxation and immigration, and has been using both to undermine the independent power of religion in two ways: conditionally easing taxation on religious organizations which support Government, and emphasizing immigration of opposing religious groups (to decrease the social influence of the traditional religious groups).

      Consequently, most religious institutions have been obedient to Government to the point of closure, and altering their teachings to conform with Government-supported lifestyles and initiatives.

    19. Election Fraud. The main input the People have in a democracy is through elections, which depend on a count of votes. Democracies have typically been naive to not guard the systems governing identifying voters and counting votes with high enough security to resist deliberate fraud, as though trusting that no one would stoop to such tactics. Unfortunately the moral reality is that people who would defend the murder of unborn children as a 'right' and airstrike foriegn weddings as a 'war on terrorism' and tell the nation that vaccines with many harms known to follow as 'safe' are already doing even worse than election fraud.

      Potential methods of election fraud include: inserting a large amount of fake pre-prepared ballots, voters voting under false identities, and software manipulation of vote counts.

      Examples of this problem:

    20. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Oaths of Office Contrary to Service of the People: Typically elected politicians must make an oath before taking office, and typically that oath is to serve someone or something other than the Public. In Canada, for example, federal and provincial members of parliament must make an oath of allegiance to the Monarch (not the People).

      Taking such oaths of allegiance, as a requirement to hold office, makes it literally impossible for a person who keeps their word to serve the Public first in that office.

    21. [CRITICAL FAILURE] Artificial Media Narrowing of the Election Candidates Presented by the News to Voters.

      22. News agencies are under no obligation to over all candidates in an election equaly, and so have the power to bring public attention to some options or candidates, whom they cover much, and away from other parties or candidates, whom they minimize or entirely avoid revealling the existence of.

      This leads the Public to choose only between options artificially narrowed by the news agency. Even if the voter is aware of the other options, their mind is lead to believe, by media silence about them, that they are either inferior or at least have no chance of winning.

      One examples of this is from the Ontario 2022 election, where we can compare the number of parties which the mainstream News presented to voters (as shown from one major news website), and the actual number of parties in the election (as shown from the election authority):

      We can see in the above example that although only 4 parties (shown as their leaders bust with the party symbol below) are covered by the maintream news, there are actually 25 parties registered in Ontario. That means the news is only covering 4 out of 25 parties, or 16%.

      It's so bad that even when candidates stand together at a public debate, the News doesn't usually mention or show on camera all of these participants, even when reporting on that debate. For example, in covering the Canadian federal conservative party leadership debate in May 2022, although there were six candidates standing in debate, the mainstream News covered it in a way which focuses on only Roman Baber, Pierre Poilievre and Jean Charest and nearly or entirely ignored the other three:

      This kind of selective coverage leads voters to focus only on who the News brings them to focus on, starving the other candidates of existence, nevermind worthiness, in the voters' minds.

      Interestingly, the options which the Public attention is lead to focus on are options which either clearly support what the Elites seem to want, or at least have no major objection to our system of governance and whose policies are so remarkably similar that it's difficult to tell them apart.

    22. False Representative Familiarity: Modern democratic political representatives are normally not personally known by the people voting for them, yet they feel well known due to frequent media appearances. However these are normally staged, scripted, and edited, in particular their speeches often written by others, and are not a genuine opportunity to know the character of that person. However the system doesn't provide much opportunity for many people to personally know a few.

    23. No obligation to show up for work Typically political representatives have little or no obligation to attend their elected legistlature, and many of them have abyssmal attendance records.

    24. Taking council votes from only part of the membership, either because the other members wouldn't be bothered to show up, or because the person calling the vote deliberately called it when some members were not there. In one case, a vote was suddenly called in council when a member stepped out to the washroom, which passed but would have failed if that member had been present. Yet all representatives must vote if the democracy is truly representative.

    25. Hidden Barriers to New Candidates:

      26. These obstacles impede the best & brightest from rising to leadership:

      1. Charging candiates for party leadership and exhorbitant fee to run for leadership. Example: Conservative leadership fee makes this the most expensive race ever — but is it worth the price?

      2. Political parties can ban leadership candidates before party members can any chance to vote for them as leader of the party. Example: Canada’s Conservative Party devised unspoken rule change to oust two pro-life leadership candidates

      3. Party leaders can be arbitrarily excluded from election campaign debates. For example: Pro-life Ontario Party leader slams ‘globalist’ rivals after exclusion from election debates

    26. No guarantee of equal media coverage: News media are under no obligation to cover election candidates equally, and out of sight tends to be out of mind and out of vote. It is not uncommmon for candidates with unconventional views to be ommitted from coverage, and debates, which cripples their ability to get noticed, nevermind elected.

      To truly be a level playing field, the media coverage for all elected official should be equal.

    27. Shadow Government Tendency by Government Agencies. In a system of governance where elected representatives are put at the heads of government ministries or departments without even necessarily being educated in that subject, and where their political incentive is to stay in the public eye rather than dig into the internal affairs of the departments they are head of, they are usually forced to rely heavily on the staff of that deparatment to run things for them: so heavily that the tendency is for the elected official to be no more than a figurehead with the real power and decisions happening at just under the elected level.

  2. Failures of Voter Behaviour

    1. [Critical Failure] Majority Moral Unreliability (Mob Mentality). One danger of letting the People decide everything is the tendency for the People to approve Government cruelty against a minority, which the Government might promote, if that minority is opposed to a Government program. This is exactly what happened in the 2021 Canadian federal election, where the majority (of COVID-19 vaccinated people) voted support for a clear policy to mandate COVID-19 vaccines on the minority who refused them. This is why human rights must be unsuspendable.

      The fact that you are deciding for other people, even the entire society, even for future generations, rather than just yourself, makes the moral responsibliy to know the subject personally even more (not less).

    2. [Critical Failure] Failure to examine all the options before making a decision. Knowing all of the options is the minimum requirement to making a proper decision, and no one would like a decision made where they offered an option which wasn't even looked at, but unfortunately it takes effort, and voters have no immediate incentive to invest that effort. Too many voters seem to just decide based on two or three names in the mainstream news, and one or two campaign promises, without any more investigation than that.

      That's not a fair way to decide such important things. Voters have a duty to find all the candidates listed by the election authority (not merely those listed by mainstream news), and compare and contrast the the policy platforms of each candidate, before making a decision. Otherwise it's an uninformed decision and a failure of the democratic assumption that whoever offers the best policy ideas will be elected. In practice, those offers are too often not even read.

    3. [Critical Failure] Voting based on Loyalty (Tribalism). This is a major problem with democracy, where voters believe that morality lies with loyalty of support to one particular candidate or party, rather than immediately changing to whicever candidate offers the best ideas at the time. Failure to switch when better ideas are offered works against the evolution of our society, which depends not on time somuch as this need to insist on taking better options as soon as they are available without the false virtue of loyalty to people.

    4. [Critical Failure] Willingness to Vote for 'the Least Evil' Option. Beliving that they must vote for the options presented on the ballot, or worse, one of the optiosn presented on mainstream news, voters who can't find any candidate with compatible views on an issue the voter cares about will usually vote for whichever candidate appears the lesser harm. In other words, if they recognize all candidates as evil, according to their own moral judgment system, they will vote for the one who seems the least evil, on an argument of forced choice.

      Unfortunately, if you vote for what you recognize as evil, even if it is the least evil, you are guilty of approving what you understand to be evil, and there's a moral responsiblitiy for that. It would be better you didn't vote at all or wrote the name of your God on the ballot instead of choosing evil for yourself and your society.

    5. [Critical Failure] Reckless Voter Ignorance:

      Sometimes voters have a strong and voting opinion on an issue without bothering to fully understand that issue, as though it's ont worth their time, even when that issue is life or death for someone else. Examples:

      Unfortunately our democratic culture today has been to strongly encourage people to vote, but not to encourage them to understand the issues they vote on. It's so bad that the right to choose is touted far above any sense of responsibilty for making a wise and informed choice.

      A majority of ignorant voters can politically overpower a minority of knowledgeable voters on any topic and consistently mislead the country in ruinous courses of action.

      For example, in the COVID-19 crisis, it seemed like everyone had a strong opinion about lockdowns, social distancing, masks, and vaccines: strong enough to enforce these measures to the point of mandating them, or harassing strangers, or snitching on their own neighbours, and damanding many human rights suspensions to enforce them. If they bothered to understand the topic, they would have known that all of these measures were impossible to help: for example, a surgical mask or 6 foot distancing are no protection against a virus which is admitted by the WHO to be airborne.

    6. [Critical Failure] Moral Voter Ignorance:

      Although democratic systems theoretically put, directly or indirectly, all things a Government does or will do for voters to decide, even the most conscientious wide-minded voter has practical limits in how many issues they find time to be informed about enough that they can make a just decision.

      Perhaps it's unfair to even expect voters to care about every issue the Government is involved in.

      Either way, voters shouldn't be forced to render a decision on all issues if they only want to render a decision on some issues.

    7. [Critical Failure] Voters Not Voting: This allows the Government to be selected without a complete mandate of all the people, and they don't seem to mind. This is foolish as it means you consent to literally anyone ruling you anyhow. It is also a complete failure of electorate duty and democratic assumption that people don't want to vote. As a recent example, in the Ontario, Canada June 2022 election, only approximately 43% of eligible voters voted (article: Voter turnout in Ontario lowest in history, early data from Elections Ontario shows.

    8. Emotionally-Based Voter Decisions: It's become popular to vote based on emotional reasons, especially individual attributes of the candidate, rather than on mental reasons such as policies. In particular, it seems that many people would rather elect a charismatic leader than a wise leader, ie. will refuse to vote for a leader with good policies they agree with if that leader doesn't present with a lot of strength, certainty, and energy. For example:

      • The motivational speaker Tony Robbins criticized Al Gore for not using emotion enough in his speeches, alleging that if he had used emotion he would have won the elction (video here, see from 4:55 time). Assuming for a moment that Al Gore's climate message was accurate, if he offered an election policy platform vital to save the planet, was a lack of passion in his speech a good reason not to vote for and therefore empower him to carry out the planet-saving agenda? No, it was a foolish reason to turn the man down, but it's considered to be a wise reason to never vote for weakness no matter what else.

      • Many people voted for Bill Clinton because he showed he could play the saxaphone during his election campaign. As fun as that is, that judgment fails to match the skills of the candidate to the position applied for. For one thing, the President of the United States is the sole commander-in-chief of what was the most powerful military in the world, including many nuclear weapons deployable on a word. It was of most vital importance that the position be held by someone who can discern truth correctly and make wise strategic and tactical decisions quickly. If you would't hire a computer programmer because of how well he or she plays the saxaphone, you shouldn't do it for the office of President: the presidency is an intellectual, decision-making kind of job. It would have been wiser to elect a great chess player for the job than someone who is quick at pushing buttons (of which a saxaphone has many).

      Likely that's also what Hitler used to get elected, passion in his voice being considered more important than the morality of what he was saying, and maybe the only reason the German people regretted it was because they lost the war and losing is weak. Otherwise, to judge emotionally, might seems right. But it's not right.

      How important a problem is this? It's critical. To improve as a society, we need the people with the best policies to be elected into authority to implement those policies, not the people with the best air or most passionate speech (the speeches are usually written by professional speechwriters anyway). Furthermore, since most humans are not strong in every way at the same time, the intellectuals with the best ideas are not likely to be the athletes or musicians with the best body or charisma. As long as we elect leaders emotionally, it will NEVER happen that the person with the best ideas gets into power except by accident.

    9. Fear of Wasted Vote.

      An illogical but common attitude of voters is that they don't want their vote to be 'wasted' or that their one vote won't make any significant difference. Mathematically, in one person compared to the election this is usually true, but it's a failure of duty on an individual level, a failure of democractic assumption on a social level, and if that attitude is adopted by more than one person, it becomes a phenomenon of great significance to determining the election outcome.

      One consequence of this is that new parties, not favoured by the Establishment or their news agencies, who seem to have no realistic chance of winning the election, tend to get far less votes than their policy proposals deserve because proud voters don't want their vote to be 'wasted'. They don't seem to mind the trouble and cost these candidates are going to to even offer the option, or feel an duty to support the best options. This habit tends to keep established parties in power, no matter how poor their policies are, because voters believe that any other options, though they are offered, don't have 'a chance' to vote for them and don't want to be part of losing

    10. Failure to Prioritise Morality as a Criteria in Candidate Selection: Some voters don't see a need to prioritise or even notice morality of politicians and policies except to complain to each other about it if they personally feel wronged by them (everyone understands morality when they are wronged). It's an unfortunate attitude, because morality is of eternal importance: certainly the most important criteria for determining the most long term results.

      When the Public does recognize morality, it tends to focus on sensational issues (such as a sex scandal) rather than issues related to the post of guiding the nation (such as attitudes on medical freedom).

      In particular, tyranny should be recognized and never re-elected, as a tyrant in one issue, tends to be a tyrant in all issues. For example, whereas Ontario (Canada) Premier Doug Ford was re-elected in June 2022 despite previously instituting some of the longest and harshest COVID-19 lockdowns in North America, and instituting proof of vaccination requirements and creating a 2-tier society despite a public promise he would not, teachers unions seem unjustifiably surprised that he would, in his second term, invoke a rarely used clause to override human rights to declare any teachers strike illegal before it even happened (example article Oct 31, 2022: Ontario is using the notwithstanding clause to stop a school strike. Here's what it is and how it works).

  3. Betrayal of the Nation's Best Interests Long-Term

    1. Betrayal by Voters: Voters seem to have no problem with voting for measures against their country's best interest if it's to support a handout for them. For example, despite it being unfair to future generations, it seems very popular for voters to support deficit spending today to be payed back or financed many years into the future.

    2. Betrayal by Politicians: Outright bribery is not only possible, and tempting to someone holding office only a few years, but seems to be very common, even in deeloped nations. For example, please see from 1:58:05 of this video interview.

Trapped Democracy:

This is when the many dangers of representative democracy, especially the ability to do literally anything once in power regardless of what promised in the election, actually manifest in a system of governance where people can vote but they cannot change the direction of Government policy.

Captured Democracy

This is trapped democracy which serves an external party (the captor) rather than the voters. For example:

Why not start your own political party?

Some might attempt to justify the frequent lack of ability for a citizen to effectively vote their will on certain issues, for reasons listed above, by saying that if you don't like it you can run for office yourself. Here are some problem with that thinking:

  • If you need to run for office just to be able to vote your opinion on an issue, it means that the political system has failed you as a voter.

  • Being a political leader might not be your talent or calling in life. For example, maybe you are a brilliant surgeon and should stay doing that.

  • You may have health or other physical reasons which prevent you.

  • There's usually a considerable cost of time and money to do this.

  • That option may not serve the timeframe which the issue requires.

Moreover, the dream of starting your own political party tends to get stifled at the media and funding level, because mainstream media tends not to cover unconventional parties (unless they grow enough to become a threat to the established parties, in which case the coverage tends to be negative). Without equal media coverage and campaign funding, you are at a tremendous disadvantage which most startups fail to overcome.

Conclusions on Representative Democracy:

Representative Democracy is merely being given a choice of temporary dictator. If they have discretionary power over you, without any need to ask your permission again until the next election, or any requirement to keep their election promises, that's a temporary dictatorship which you are consenting to. In real democracy, the People decide policies not dictators.

Put another way, referendums are an opportunity for the Voters to decide policy, but elections are a way to force the People to give their human rights over to someone else's control: either to choose someone to rule over them, or abstain and others make the choice for them.

Suggestions for Improvements to Democracy:

  1. [CRITICAL NEED] Upgrade to policy-direct democracy where policies on each issue, rather than merely candidates, are decided by voteers.

  2. [CRITICAL NEED] Separate issues into separate votes, so that no one is forced to vote on issues they don't care about to vote on one they do, and no one is forced to vote against their wishes on some issues to vote for their wishes on others.

  3. [CRITICAL NEED] Allow voters a way to decide what the issues are in the election, rather than candidates deciding this. Issue selection is more powerful than issue decision, and should be in the hands of voters not dictated to them.

  4. [CRITICAL NEED] Allow voters a 'none of the above' option. There should be some way for voters to express that whoever decided the options for them decided wrong. Option selection is more powerful than option decision, and should be in the hands of voters not dictated to them.

  5. [CRITICAL NEED] Limit Government secrecy from its citizens. In a democracy, where the People are in charge, the People need basic truths about the reality we live in and the plans and decsions and involvements of our Government. Only things which would mean direct threat to the Public's good if exposed, such as the exact position of our troops on a battlefield, should be concelaed from the Public: not fundamental facts of our reality, such as if ETs exist or even walk amongst us. For starters, our Government must not be permitted to bind the Public in contracts which the Public is not permitted to read (such as which happened during the COVID-19 crisis with vaccine manufacturers).

  6. [CRITICAL NEED] As long as representative democracy remains, record election promises and compel elected representatives to keep them. Otherwise the democratic system is truly only a rotating dictatorship, with no reliable way for voters to influence policy.

  7. [CRITICAL NEED] Prevent the majority from voting a cancellation or suspension of any human rights for any minority: group, opinion, or behaviour.

  8. [CRITICAL NEED] Correct human rights legislation so that it does not include clauses permitting Government override.

  9. [CRITICAL NEED] Prevent Government from awarding itself 'emergency powers' or arbirarily renewing them.

  10. [CRITICAL NEED] Abolish political parties so that politicians workf or their constituents and no other master. Parties are only a means for the few to control the many. A non-party system would funtion far better to actually represent constituents, and the legislative house would be based on many minds in discussion instead of one mind in control.

  11. Ensure candidates are presented in equal amount to the Public mind. All news coverage must be an equal amount, rather than the News choosing who they will cover and thereby, to a great extent, who is or is not in the public mind.

  12. Institute term limits not only for elected politicians but for top employees at government ministries and agencies.

  13. Have some work attendance requirements for elected representatives.

What to Do:

  1. Take Voter Responsibility:

    1. At election time:

      1. To vote with understanding (of issues and candidates) each election. You are free to choose your own priority of issues, but it is irresoncible to vote for any platform or policy which you don’t understand.

      2. To research all sides of important issues based on evidence and diverse sources.

      3. To review all the options offered, according to the election authority (not the News), before making a decision. It is unfair and irresponsible prejudice to not look at each person or proposal before making your decision.

      4. To decide based on platform quality over loyalty to any candidate or party.

      5. To never vote for what you understand to be evil: not even if it is the lesser evil.

      6. If you have an opportunity to vote but there is no one worthy to vote for, make a protest vote. This is normally done by deliberately spoiling your ballot, such as by writing in the name of your diety as your selection and handing that in.

    2. At all times:

      1. Voice approval or objection to your political represenatative on any critical current issues.

      2. Keep an open ear without bias to information on issues which you will or may be voting on.

      3. Spread important evidence you have found with other voters on critical issues.

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