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Visions of Society

Informed Voting

Lorenzo Capitani is in favour of government through knowledge not ignorance.

I would like to suggest an improvement of an important aspect of the current democratic model – the voting practices which give access to legislative power – based on the idea that only people who have an interest in a specific issue and have knowledge pertaining to that issue should be in a position to influence a decision regarding it. In this way, as the problem is analysed and the responsibility is shared among informed minds, then if not the best, at least an adequately good decision, is made.

In representative governments this principle of informed decision-making is often satisfied by policies being examined by a restricted and specialised commission which generally considers the concern, takes a vote, and passes their conclusions over to their political general assembly, which examines the matter and takes a final decision. However, here the amount of people involved on a specific issue is really small! Only in countries where issues are constantly reviewed by referenda and the voting model approaches most the concept of democracy, such as Switzerland, are laws examined and backed or rejected with a considerable degree of consensus. The population itself is directly involved in the decision-making.

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