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Of representative democracy 1
A representative democracy is no longer a democracy but an aristocracy: representatives have power over a people who entrusted it to them. The ultimate justification for delegating power is that exercising power is a full-time job. But delegation has major shortcomings.
Political marketing
Getting elected requires a majority of voters to gather around a programme. Visionaries convincing crowds seem to have given way to marketers: building the winning program involves opinion polls and voter segmentation. A candidate must sell himself, with all the failings inherent in a sales process.
The impossible representation
With 10 candidates, each defending a variable part (but never significantly superior to the others) of my ideas, it is obvious that no candidate represents me. The reality is less caricatural, but it is still a real problem to find a representative of any population.
Who wins the election?
As soon as there are more than two candidates, the logic of choosing the winner on the basis of votes is very unclear. In France we are used to two-round majority vote, other elections are based on a single-round majority vote. Renowned mathematicians, having demonstrated the shortcomings of these two voting systems, have proposed alternatives.
A single vote, 5 candidates, 5 different voting systems, all making perfect sense, and resulting in 5 different winners.
There are still more voting systems, but claiming that one is universal and therefore superior to the others would seem preposterous to me.