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This is a forum for you to dicuss ideas on line - these ideas are your ideas - they are ideas that we may not agree with - but we are providing you with a framework for that discussion. The outcome of the Claiming our Future Event will be the results of the deliberations on the day
As far back as the 1790's the great Republican George Washington recognised that political parties were corrosive to good governance and democracy. In his farewell address he stated that political parties do nothing but;
"serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinar... more
Declan Meenagh
Washington also kept slaves,
Angela
I totally agree here - We have a history of different political parties getting into power and false promises - all serving members of government should be independant - And the public should also be able to vote what role/position that individual should hold in government; for example I do not want a trained solicitor to be in charge of the finances of my country - i want someone who has previous experience in finance to be the one. Ultimately us the public are hiring our government each election - no... more
I totally agree here - We have a history of different political parties getting into power and false promises - all serving members of government should be independant - And the public should also be able to vote what role/position that individual should hold in government; for example I do not want a trained solicitor to be in charge of the finances of my country - i want someone who has previous experience in finance to be the one. Ultimately us the public are hiring our government each election - now if you think of a job interview and the applicant said yes i can do that and this etc. and then did not deliver this in his performance he would be sacked - right ? This is how it should be in relation to those we pay to run the country - if they do not get the job done the are sacked [no golden handshakes either].
Salaries should not exceed €100k and there should be no expense accounts and no bonus paid just for showing up to work. the working hours should be the same as any other workers 35-40 hrs per week, and 4 weeks holidays a year plus bank holidays.
Sometimes i think that we all forget that the people we put in government are working for us - not us working for them. Our taxes should never have been used to bail out the banks !
HardWorkingEejit
Bernard, are you really taking this seriously ? Thats reason enough to not vote for you and your platform of like minded candidates. Can you not distinguish between harmless venting of frustration and serious suggestions ?
Bernard Cantillon
Why shouldn't I be able to band together with those of a similar position to my own and present that platform to the electorate. That is what a political party is. No more. No less.
HardWorkingEejit
Yes, but what do we replace them (& the senate & president) with ?
One concrete proposal is to let the people vote directly using "Barcode on paper" eVoting (one of the suggestions in this general forum .... see .... "We need ELECTRONIC VOTING (Safe & Secure) ...").
"Barcode on paper" eVoting means the votes cast are NOT stored on discs or in any electronic form, they are stored as printed barcodes (Ink on paper) and cannot be tampered with any more or less tha... more
Yes, but what do we replace them (& the senate & president) with ?
One concrete proposal is to let the people vote directly using "Barcode on paper" eVoting (one of the suggestions in this general forum .... see .... "We need ELECTRONIC VOTING (Safe & Secure) ...").
"Barcode on paper" eVoting means the votes cast are NOT stored on discs or in any electronic form, they are stored as printed barcodes (Ink on paper) and cannot be tampered with any more or less than the existing voting system can be. The votes are still on paper. They are still placed in a ballot box. There are no electronic copies to tamper with.
The printed ballots will have to have a human readable vote on it as well, which the voter can read & check, so the ballot papers will automatically form a paper audit trail, and manual re-counts will be possible, as will random sampling and checking.
The votes could be quickly counted, using inexpensive scanners (< €100 for the cheapest when buying just 1) to scan the barcodes (which would store the constituency & polling station info and the voters inputs/choices in a single barcode)
The official vote scanning & tallying software would be important software, and would have to be thoroughly tested and be open to public scrutiny. No problem there, there are plenty of people prepared to write this software - me included - and provide it free of costs, free of copyright & free of intellectual property right restrictions, with full source code available for widespread testing & scrutiny)
In addition thousands of people in Ireland would be capable of checking any ballot because all you have to do is scan the barcodes into excel (or similar) and write simple macro's there to check the results. That is childs play to lots of younger people, so the political parties, independent candidates & special interest groups (Unions, Social groups and other proposers of changes), could write their own counting routines and run their own scans & counts to check the official results afterwards - under supervised conditions of course - where the paper ballots are managed in a safe & secure environment.
The system can run on ordinary PC's, no special equipment needed, because they are merely printing ballots not storing them, so no huge IT storage costs.
They can be school PC's one day and ballot machines the next. Plug in a memory stick and its a ballot machine, take it out and all the balloting capabilities & data are removed.
We'll always need polling booths to ensure people can vote in secret and cannot be bought or coerced into voting a particular way, but it'll still be cheaper, quicker and will strengthen the peoples grip on our own democracy.
With such a system in place where the voting & counting is safe & secure, and fast and in-expensive, the people can be consulted at low cost on many issues and we can eventually reduce significantly the numbers of politicians as well as their wages.