Because the world is not what is used to be.

Yesterday I came across someone saying online that people should “organize referendums on almost everything, and thus make our living much more democratic in the original meaning of this word”.

I could not help but ask: excuse me, but… when you say “organize referendums on almost everything” do you mean “voting online” on everything?

And the answer was: “Indeed I do. There will be a need for safeguards of course."

Forget it. Please

Personally I would not waste one minute on that path, and advice everybody to do the same, for two main reasons:

1. “voting online” for anything that really matters is the only voting idea that is dumber than e-voting. See any of these posts for more, starting from the “ANY “remote” voting is stupid” paragraph of the post titled “Once more…" to see why. NO expert thinks online voting can be really safe
2. ours is a globalized, high-tech world

“Organize referendums on almost everything, and thus make our living much more democratic in the original meaning of this word” can only work in the original CONTEXT of the word “democracy”: the typical greek city-state, where very few people had to vote, but above all the world was orders of magnitude simpler than today.

All the Greeks had to vote about was stuff that everybody could grasp with some confidence due to direct experience, at the level of “which hill will we make cows pasture this year?”, or “should we fight the guys over that hill again?”. No, wait! Not “the Greeks”! “Probably no more than 30 percent of the total adult population”.

Been there, done that

Never mind ancient Greece. Adding to point 2, “organize referendums on almost everything, and thus make our living much more democratic in the original meaning of this word” cannot work for the reasons known to our modern world since at least the 1970s (see “Tyranny of structurelessness”). Today, we also see this in practice, at larger scales.

Because (speaking of governance methods only, regardless of actual programs!) that approach is exactly what the italian Five Star Movement (M5S) did, and de-facto abandoned, in the last ten years.

First time they went to a national parliament election, in 2013, they got 25% of popular vote, exactly because they looked new and real democratic. That “referendum for everything” thing was the bedrock of their political proposal.

M5S DID have their own online platform to self-organize bottom-up, and “organize referendums on almost everything”. Their main slogan was “uno vale uno”, that is “(each) one person counts as any other one person”. Even when it comes to deciding anything, no matter how complicated.

Their elected representatives demanded to be called by media mere “spokepeople” of their electors, to whom they would defer, on that democratic platform of theirs, to take almost any decision.

Each senator or deputee would vote in Parliament, or participate in any Parliamentary Commission, on the same bases, as a mere speakerperson of his or her voters, without any autonomy (which is also against the italian Constitution, btw).

Oh, and they also went for livestreaming political discussions and even meeting with other parties, as being more democratic than releasing full, fully reusable written documentation of what was discussed and how. “Come and watch the streaming, take all the notes you want”. Just like the Athenians, see?

That, in 2013/2014. Then reality (that is, the complexity of contemporary society) and human nature set in. It cannot work.

Today, M5S have almost completely stopped mentioning “uno vale uno”, and have official delegates to study and decide on specific matters.

Nominally they still their online voting platform, which is all but transparent, and is often used to ratify what the party elite has decided.

Even better: almost all their activists and representatives now campaign and work online almost exclusively … on Facebook, where the plebs is. NOT inside their wonderfully democratic, privacy-friendly, “online platform”.

Do say yes to, and demand, Open Data, real accountability, simpler laws, no voter suppression.

Do say NO to “online referendum on everything”. It is a pipe dream, and a field-tested one now.

Image source: Pericles speaking to the Athenian Assembly, found in “Athenian Democracy”, Wikipedia