In an interview on DemocracyNow, Russel Brand said:

…the apathy doesn’t come from us, the people. The apathy comes from the politicians. They are apathetic to our needs…

Perhaps that’s more of a symptom than a cause. Perhaps most, or even all of our political problems are also symptoms.

In my analysis, we have results exactly consistent with our political system. Our democratic systems were born out of the idea of “representative democracy”, but with typical human shallow thinking, we thought if people voted for representatives, the representatives would know what we want and they’d vote for solutions. While some representatives thought the same and tried to do right by voters, many were corrupt. And as our world became more complex, it became impossible to know what people wanted- we even enshrined this idea in the term “silent majority.”

Later he said:

I look elsewhere for alternatives … alternative political systems …
I’ve not invented it yet

What would a political alternative look like in which government was representative? The usual answer is that representatives would do what we want and be accountable. So what kind of system would produce these?

For government to be representative, the people would need to be representable. We’d have to say what we want in a way that could communicate clearly. An easy way to do this is to enable us to vote on issues.

For government to be accountable, first, our representatives would need a way to account for their actions, to report to us on each issue. If we had a website where we could vote on issues, each issue would havea link to my representative’s report in addition to its questions.

Second, we’d need a way to hold representatives accountable. Today, we understand this to mean a way for challengers to run effective campaigns inexpensively, so they’re not beholden to wealthy interests. But this is easy if we had the website above- we could allow challengers to report to us as well on each issue.

While much more is possible on such a website, just the basic functions above, if done well, would revolutionize both politics and government. Embracing a political alternative need not be violent, nor change the basic ideals of our society- it can merely support them.

Please help guide government- log onto PeopleCount.org today and try out what it’d be like to vote on issues. And then support PeopleCount to help us grow.