Which is exactly what happened over road pricing where the e-mail asking people to sign the petition was spammed ruthlessly through the internet for weeks. Frankly with the level of spamming its amazing they only managed to persuade 1.7 million people to waste 30 seconds signing an online petition.

See also – “Hands Off Britain! Get Out of the EU!” Excellent chance of that passing, repentance at leisure when unemployment=maximum leisure time.

Or “Scrap Trident”. Could easily pass, and it’s another example of a decision that is highly emotive and extremely difficult to reverse if it proves stupid.

Note that those kinds of issues are exactly the ones that are most likely to be petitioned.

The answer, in my opinion, is ‘yes’. More than 5% of the population watch Gillian McKeith spout nonsense about nutrition. More than 5% debate the importance of various issues inside the Big Brother House. More than 5% read the Daily Mail.

It might be interesting if petitions triggered an investigation by a body (with the power to subpoena) independent of the government. There does, however, need to be a mechanism that will prevent petitions and the like being overtaken by rabid one issue fundamentalists.

I think this hit on the big problem in the idea. Whilst if we had any form of democracy it’d be a great idea, in the current climate you’d effectively be handing control over to the wealthy opinionators – murdoch etc, rather than the democratic will of the people. If we had a democratic media or something, then perhaps it’d be different.

“The people are never corrupted, though often deceived, and it is only then that they seem to will what is evil.” – Rousseau

I agree that e-voting is unworkable. The thing about fake signatories is a problem. Perfhaps people should be obliged to give out their passport/NINO/driving license number when they sign. This would reduce the possibilities for successful fakes. And a random proportion of the signatures could be checked for fakeness. These two measures together would prevent a petition from getting too many fake signatures.

This is why e-voting is not workable (and is unlikely to be so for the foreseeable future).

The real power of online activity is the sharing of information and opinion to trigger offline action.

I think the relevant part of the paragraph that you quoted is “people … who can take the time to look at a proposal in detail and come to an informed decision”. Politicians, certainly MPs, work full time on this sort of thing; even with the best will in the world, the general member of the public simply doesn’t have the time required to read/listen to detailed arguments on both sides and look at the evidence and come to a reasoned conclusion, once there are a significant number that come up (I understand that as many as 15, or perhaps even more of these things come up on a particular election day). When you add up the time that would be required, I think you end up with an untenable situation. I could go on a bit, but am at work, so probably shouldn’t.

I don’t think such a referendum would be triggered, since few people would be daft enough to support something obvuiously stupid. If it was triggered, it wouldn’t pass, for the same reason.

In any case, what’s to stop a party beinhg voted in to power on such a daft platform? Nothing, other than the fact that all the parties know that if they support such an idiotic proposal their opponents will make sure the voters know and they’ll be slaughtered at the ballot box.

“While these may not pass in a the popular vote, at least one of them, possibly more, are incompatible with our treaty obligations, for example.”

The only one that’s incompatible, as far as I can see, is the one on capital punishment, which would involve us leaving the EU. Would voters, particularly those whose jobs depend on European trade, vote for that? I doubt it.

Regasrding referenda that are very loosely worded, obviously it would be silly to allow that. There would have to be some system that decides the working of a referendum. There are a number of places that allow citizen’s initiatives (such as California, or Switzerland) and they seem to get past this problem.

There should also be some sort of system where parliament could add its own choice onto the referendum (as well as what the referendum-supporters want and the status quo). So for example if the referendum was to abolish trident, the government could add a choice to keep it but to renegotiate a better non-proliferation treaty. In this way, I can imagine that parliament could defang proposals it found unacceptable.

Another safeguard could be that a referendum result is only advisory unless it wins by a big majority (e.g. 60% of votes cast, or 50% of the electorate).

“Once you have to start taking into account the monetary consequences, international concerns and other ancillary matters, wouldn’t it be a good idea to select people to do this for us who can take the time to look at a proposal in detail and come to an informed decision – oh, look, politicians.”

And what’s to stop people voting in bad politicians? It’s odd if you trust the people enough to choose their leasders, but not to vote in referenda.

Arguably it’s “more democratic” but — and here I’m making a value judgement — I don’t see it making the country a better place.

That said, I’m no fan of the way we do things right now. And certainly the threat of flash-referenda would keep politicians on their toes.

OK, so we add some sort of reasonableness restriction, but who is to say what is reasonable.

Questions that could easily have a referendum triggered:

– Return of the death penalty
– Life imprisonment for pedophiles*
– Immediate withdrawal from Iraq
– Scrapping of Trident

* While failing to provide a reasonable definition, or providing an overly broad definition, of pedophile

While these may not pass in a the popular vote, at least one of them, possibly more, are incompatible with our treaty obligations, for example.

Once you have to start taking into account the monetary consequences, international concerns and other ancillary matters, wouldn’t it be a good idea to select people to do this for us who can take the time to look at a proposal in detail and come to an informed decision – oh, look, politicians. I have no problem with petitions triggering debate at the requisite level of government though. (Don’t get me wrong, I actually like the idea, but I really don’t know how workable it is – I know there are similar things in various US states, but I don’t know the detail and am not in the mood for research at the moment.)