Sixteen-year-olds can learn to drive, get a job, pay taxes and be on the Organ Donor Register, but they are considered too young to vote. Should they also have a stake in deciding their future?
While I agree that direct democracy is the only real democracy, history has shown that direct democracy can only really be achieved in small communities, otherwise you run into various problems.
Referendums are notable examples of a direct democracy in action, however they can only really work with simple yes or no questions as more complex questions usually don’t work (as voter turn out becomes abysmal).
There are ways it could get close to working, but it really becomes more like continuous representative democracy.
For example, you could set things up so that instead of having a fixed size parliament, you have a virtual parliament that can have participation by every voter if they like to vote on the bills. Then, you allow people to revocably grant and revoke delegations of their vote to someone else. You have some laws around delegations - you can’t coerce people to give you their delegation, and as a recipient of a delegation, you only get to know how many people delegated to you, not who. People get to choose whether they will accept incoming delegations - but if they accept them, their vote on issues is public (otherwise secret). People accepting delegations also need to declare minor conflicts of interest, and avoid major ones entirely. You can’t accept money for a delegation - although if you get enough the government will pay you for having enough delegations and actively exercising those delegations. Unlike voting, people can revoke their delegation at any time, and either vote on issues themselves, or re-delegate. Missing too many issues votes without having appointed a delegate could lead to a warning and eventually a fine.
The biggest issue then becomes how to avoid spamming too many bills in a potentially huge virtual parliament - either because it is a fringe issue, or as a filibuster. This could be worked around by having a maximum number of bills per day to vote on (potentially voted on regularly to set), and letting voters optionally rank one or more bills they’d like to progress - which run against each other in proportional voting to select the slate of bills to go to a vote. Voters would not need to read every possible bill, and could discuss outside the voting system to encourage each other to support a particular bill making it to the agenda. A similar mechanism could limit amendment proposals to bills to be voted on.
While I agree that direct democracy is the only real democracy, history has shown that direct democracy can only really be achieved in small communities, otherwise you run into various problems.
Referendums are notable examples of a direct democracy in action, however they can only really work with simple yes or no questions as more complex questions usually don’t work (as voter turn out becomes abysmal).
There are ways it could get close to working, but it really becomes more like continuous representative democracy.
For example, you could set things up so that instead of having a fixed size parliament, you have a virtual parliament that can have participation by every voter if they like to vote on the bills. Then, you allow people to revocably grant and revoke delegations of their vote to someone else. You have some laws around delegations - you can’t coerce people to give you their delegation, and as a recipient of a delegation, you only get to know how many people delegated to you, not who. People get to choose whether they will accept incoming delegations - but if they accept them, their vote on issues is public (otherwise secret). People accepting delegations also need to declare minor conflicts of interest, and avoid major ones entirely. You can’t accept money for a delegation - although if you get enough the government will pay you for having enough delegations and actively exercising those delegations. Unlike voting, people can revoke their delegation at any time, and either vote on issues themselves, or re-delegate. Missing too many issues votes without having appointed a delegate could lead to a warning and eventually a fine.
The biggest issue then becomes how to avoid spamming too many bills in a potentially huge virtual parliament - either because it is a fringe issue, or as a filibuster. This could be worked around by having a maximum number of bills per day to vote on (potentially voted on regularly to set), and letting voters optionally rank one or more bills they’d like to progress - which run against each other in proportional voting to select the slate of bills to go to a vote. Voters would not need to read every possible bill, and could discuss outside the voting system to encourage each other to support a particular bill making it to the agenda. A similar mechanism could limit amendment proposals to bills to be voted on.