#voteflux

Prior reviews: federal 2016

Running where: NSW, VIC, WA.

What I said before: “Yes, VOTEFLUX.ORG | Upgrade Democracy! is the name that will appear on ballots. Yes, it makes me want to punch myself in the face too.”

What I think this year: Yes, it’s that wet fart of a techbro electoral thought bubble—representatives who have no policy and who will vote on bills in accordance with the outcome of polls on an app. Stunningly, not only do we have multiple parties espousing this idea, but they have also managed to endure an entire electoral cycle to again fight it out for the misguided-futurist vote again.

I have already had a go at this nonsense in a past review of the other party to propose it. I do not feel the need to repeat myself. Flux continue to peddle bad history and ahistorical claims about how “Parliament is a 19th century power structure that no longer works in the modern age” (spoiler: parliament does not date from the nineteenth century, nor are its forms and functions outdated). I went after that in the 2016 review linked at the start of this review, so again no need to repeat myself. This is a party proposing a bad idea and justifying it with utter balderdash. Don’t waste your time, no matter how slick a website they might have.

Also, for the love of god, if you are going to call your party Flux, just fucking put that on the ballot, don’t resort to registering something that looks as dumb as “VOTEFLUX.ORG | Upgrade Democracy!”

My recommendation: give Flux a weak or no preference.

Running in: all six States for the Senate, plus for the Senate in the ACT as an ungrouped candidate below the line.

Yes, VOTEFLUX.ORG | Upgrade Democracy! is the name that will appear on ballots. Yes, it makes me want to punch myself in the face too. What’s with parties doing silly things like including websites, hashtags, and slogans in their name? It doesn’t make you look trendy. It makes you look like some dad who just discovered social media. Fortunately, this party refer to themselves on their website simply as Flux. Let’s roll with that.

Highlights:

If you like their idea, you like their idea. I don’t. At all.

Lowlights:

This party is based on the assumption that the political system at the moment is “broken” and that power needs to be returned to the people. It’s a nice phrase to shout in discontent, but the system’s humming along as designed and the idea it is “gridlocked” is a complete myth (the minority Gillard government, for instance, was actually spectacularly efficient at passing legislation). The extent to which people hold power federally has not changed substantially since 1902, when the gradual expansion of the vote in colonial-era Australia was completed with the enfranchisement of women by the young federal parliament, and it has been moderately enhanced at Senate level this year through the voting reforms that eliminate the backroom deals associated with above-the-line Group Voting Tickets.

Now, Flux complain that this parliamentary democracy system is an outdated nineteenth-century design. Let’s go beyond their fairly clichéd blather about lying politicians and get to this core point of structure. I agree that we could consider whether reforms such as multi-member electorates and proportional representation would enhance our democracy, but that’s not what this party is proposing. They ask whether you would use the same “operating system” for 400 years, and I hate to break it to Flux but computer design practices can’t really be equated with parliamentary democracy. Fundamentally I think the representative parliamentary model that we have works well, and is superior to a delegate system that falls back to a majority vote on every issue.

That’s what Flux propose: a delegate system, a kind of digital direct democracy where you vote on every issue via their app. This party actually is no different to Online Direct Democracy except that they would use a different platform. In the same way as people immersed in the corporate world confuse business with government, here we have some technophiles confusing IT with government. Democracy isn’t a battle for who can design the nicest app!

And the idea of voting on every item of legislation via an app is a terrible idea. I’ve already gone into some detail on a bunch of points in my Online Direct Democracy review. I’ll list them now and you can read that other review if you want more: legislating is a full time job; parliamentary business is large in quantity and complexity; providing “balanced” summaries of a bill is unlikely, perhaps impossible; parliament has important debate and committee components that these digital direct democracy parties completely ignore; it will be easy to skew participation and results in an app vote by those with a good social media game; and it excludes those with limited or no online access.

Summary:

I dismissed this idea when Online Direct Democracy proposed it, and this second opportunity to consider it has only solidified my stance. Modern technology offers so much potential, but this specific idea is wanting. It will downgrade democracy.

My recommendation: Give Voteflux a weak or no preference.

Website Main platform in one sentence Perhaps the party with the liveliest name of all, VOTEFLUX present an online system that gives power back to the people – but insist on being different to Online Direct Democracy.

Main policies Yes, two of these parties exist. If you cast your mind back to about a week ago, you will recall when we covered Online Direct Democracy. VOTEFLUX are, dare I say, almost identical. They also aim to give voters the power to direct their MPs’ and senators’ votes on every bill that comes through parliament, through interactive technology. However, VOTEFLUX might have an advantage over ODD. They have noted a few flaws in the system and have come up with ways to address them. The Flux system allows you one vote per bill. However, you don’t have to cast it every time – if you feel like it, you can give your vote to another person, or save it up so that you have a more powerful voice on the issues that matter most to you. The Flux system has a lot of IT power behind it, designed to minimise hacking and skewing of votes. While on face value VOTEFLUX and ODD have the same system, Flux does seem to be a better model built on the same principle.