- Mar 2022
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www.cs.umd.edu www.cs.umd.edu
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Democratic processes take time. The goal of a legislation-writing genex is not necessarily to speed the process or increase the number of bills, but to engage a wider circle of stakeholders, support thoughtful deliberation, and improve the quality of the resulting legislation.
What are the problems here in such a democratic process online or even in a modern context?
People who aren't actually stakeholders feel that they're stakeholders and want to control other's actions even when they don't have a stake. (eg: abortion)
People don't have time to become properly informed about the ever-increasing group of topics and there is too much disinformation and creation of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Thoughtful deliberation does not happen.
The quality of legislation has dropped instead of increased.
Bikeshedding is too easy.
What if instead of electing people who run, we elected people from the electorate at random? This would potentially at least nudge us to have some representation by "one of the least of these". This would provide us to pay more attention to a broader swath of society instead of the richest and most powerful. What might the long term effects of this be?
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