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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!allegra!psuvax!parker
From: parker@psuvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: re: Alternatives to Elections
Message-ID: <211@psuvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Aug-83 16:15:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: psuvax.211
Posted: Mon Aug 29 16:15:10 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Aug-83 08:42:28 EDT
Organization: Penn. State Univ.
Lines: 25

re: Joe McGhee

Your idea about having everybody vote on every issue ignores a few important
problems.

	1)  How will the issues to be voted on be chosen?
	2)  How will the phrasing of the question to be voted on be done
	    (assuming you want a simple yes-or-no answer)?
	3)  How will people become informed of the different sides
	    of the issue?
	4)  Do we care to do anything about voter apathy?  Indeed where are
	    people going to find the time and inclination to do all this?

Setting agendas, formulating the questions, and properly distributing
the information are not things easily accomplished by 250 million people.
If you could solve these problems, we would have a democracy in the sense
that each and every one of us would participate and exert a proportional
control over the direction of the government.  Unfortunately, these problems
appear insurmountable.

I guess this says more about why we are a republic, though folks like
Alexander Hamilton never did trust the common folk anyway.

Bruce Parker
Penn State