How direct democracy helps against political polarization

The US two party system forced people to adopt a narrow set of values on each side of the political divide, connecting issues that are totally unrelated. Why should being pro- or anti-gun be connected with wanting higher or lower taxes? Why can't one have a far more nuanced view of abortion than totally against or pro-abortion to the point of supporting late-term abortion and outright infanticide?

Instead of demanding the possibility of having a more diverse representation of their views, Americans instead allowed themselves to be molded to the point of blindly supporting whatever position their party takes on a given issue.

Republicans are keenly aware of the presence of RINOs - Republicans who side with Democrats on core issues - and they have a large libertarian-leaning faction that challenges the most statist Republican politicans.

Democrats, on the other hand, seem to have almost no critical distance from their party and politicians. Their internal activists are pulling the party ever further left, promoting the most extremist politicians, with generous funding from far-left billionaires who seem hell-bent on changing the US in radical ways.

As a result, when Democrats realize that they are not represented by their party on what they used to see as core values and are shocked by all the bad things that are being done in their name, they can't speak out for internal reforms. They are forced to leave the party. This led to the #WalkAway movement.

There is no equivalent of the WalkAway movement on the Republican side, confirming my point: the Republicans just try to push back against the crazy changes the Democrats want to push through.

Many Democrats and independents do see the problems with the Democrats, but may not be willing to vote for the Republicans, either. The Libertarian party was supposed to offer an alternative, but they turned into something possibly worse than the Democrats. Given how the US electoral system works, a 3rd party is not a solution, anyway, as it just removes votes from the major party the 3rd party voter would have seen as "lesser evil".

The media tried to paint Trump as "extremist" who had to be opposed by any means, when in fact he implemented a classic conservative program. The extremists were and are definitely his opponents.

None the less, the Republican establishment sides far too often with the Democrats and leave the voters with nowhere to go.

It's obvious that the political class is the real problem. How can we get around them?

Direct Democracy is seems like an obvious answer, but does it really help?

It did allow the UK to leave the EU - but the UK government itself has massive problem. So far, the people in the UK just went from the frying pan into the fire. They would need a lot more direct democracy to fix their issues, which the government will fight tooth and nail.

France, Denmark and Ireland voted against EU treaties, but their votes were ignored or just repeated and the EU proceeded as if those votes had never occurred, which shows that direct democratic votes often do go against the establishment powers, but are hard to enforce if the people allow governments to get away with it.

The possibility of holding referenda votes exists in some US States, but not at the federal level and even at the State level, referenda are not very frequent.

The only country on the planet that regularly holds binding direct democratic votes at all levels of government is Switzerland. we get to decide on average 10 to 25 national issues and dozens at the canton level via direct democracy. So how does that work out?

Direct Democracy undermines political power

In Switzerland, we don't just have Direct Democracy, we also have more than 2 major parties. The two issues are most definitely connected. The importance of direct democracy along with the absence of a "winner takes all" majority system makes it easier for people to spread their votes.

There are 5 "big" parties and a few smaller ones. As there is no majority and minority, in parliament, every issue has to find a new coalition to reach the required 50%+ of the vote, so even small parties with just a few representatives can make a difference.

Despite the greater variety of political parties, a massive polarization occurred since the 1990s, as one party - SVP (UDC, in French) - moved from conservative to libertarian-leaning, supporting gun rights, low taxes and opposing the EU, while the other parties wanted an EU membership.

Based on those policies, the SVP became the biggest party, with 29% of the vote, far exceeding the next largest party, the socialists or SPS, who get about 18% of the vote. As could be expected, the SVP has been systematically vilified as "far right", "racist" etc. by the media, which is utter nonsense - SVP has the largest number of members who are former immigrants. Classical liberalism / libertarianism is the complete opposite of what is usually - and falsely - considered to be the "far right" (Nazism, Fascism, which are both far-left, even Marxist ideologies).

To the great chagrin of the left, they cannot just ignore SVP as they do with non-aligned opposition parties in EU countries. Outvoting them them in parliament is not a solution, as they've been winning more referenda votes than any other party or organization in Swiss history. This forces the members of parliament to take the SVP positions on laws into account and negotiate until they reach an agreement, as most politicians are not keen on losing referenda votes.

That illustrates the immense benefit of direct democracy: instead of voting for politicians, an ideology or "values", the people get to vote on a specific issues based on a precise cost/benefit and that completely changes the game.

It's obvious that politicians do not want a direct democracy where people get to vote on specific issues with well-defined legal texts. They want people to be polarized on a very small number of issues that can easily be used for emotional manipulation, while politicians can write the laws as they wish - with all the usual backdoors.

Important Swiss referenda votes

SVP repeatedly managed to get more than 50% of the national vote on important issues, which means that people who did not vote for them in an election still supported issues promoted by them - a choice that is simply not available to people under "representative" democracy.

In 1992, SVP managed win the vote against the European Economic Area with razor-thin 50.5% majority. It would have been the anti-chamber of an EU membership. 10 years later, 89% of Swiss voters opposed an initiative to open negotiations towards an EU membership. At that point, the issue turned into a dead horse.

Some of the most important SVP victories were the strict spending limit on government and various initiatives to lower taxes.

In 2011, the SVP won the vote against an anti-gun law by 57.5% of the vote.

In 2020, they won the vote against a CO2 tax, again with a very thin margin, but after 20 years of climate hoax brainwashing, that victory was totally unexpected.

One initiative supported by the SVP demanded that people convicted for pedophile crimes should not be allowed to work with children for life. You will not be surprised to learn that the left opposed this initiative, claiming that a life-time ban was "unfair".

Strangely, they have no problem with doctors and lawyers being banned for life if they are convicted of malpractice. But pedophiles should be given another chance with kids? SVP won that vote with a comfortable majority.

Problems with Direct Democracy

Direct Democracy is not a silver bullet, either. It can be undermined like any other attempt to reduce the concentration of political power.

For starters, the executive and judicial just ignore some really inconvenient laws voted by the people in surreptitious ways. They don't outright challenge the law, they just fail to implement it. The Supreme Court ruled at least once by overriding the deportation law by claiming that international treaties take precedence, but using that method exposes them to the risk of a serious political backlash.

Direct Democracy requires a free and open debate. If the information provided to the voters is government controlled and one-sided, it is often not possible to defeat the establishment powers.

In 2018, an initiative was rejected by the people that would have ended the government's quasi-monopoly on TV and radio programs which is financed with a special tax (the NoBillag initiative).

Those very same government-controlled media and the mainstream 'private' media - where 95% of the journalists are on the left - launched a massive campaign against the initiative, claiming that if the government TV and radio channels were abolished, there would be no more Swiss news or Swiss movies and local TV programs.

In 2014, the organization Operation Libero was created, with undisclosed sources of funding. They claim to be "pro EU" and for liberalism - supposedly classical liberalism, but they clearly follow the North American interpretation, i.e. Socialism.

A little digging reveals that the founder, Flavia Kleiner, is an official Swiss representative at the ECFR, the European Council on Foreign Relations, which was co-founded by Soros, so their source of funding is not so obscure after all.

Their agenda, so far, was to push for mass immigration, the naturalization of immigrants, against gun rights and for a closer integration with the EU.

This concentrated effort to undermine Switzerland led to some very bad outcomes:

• the people granted government the right to spy on communications "related to criminal or terrorist activities"; except that government had already used such powers illegally; abusive surveillance for political reasons only got worse; interestingly, the majority of young people - those who grew up with the Internet - opposed this law
• government was also granted the right to block specific web sites - foreign casino sites - as they wanted to enforce a monopoly on gambling sites that can be taxed by the Swiss government; yes, the block can easily be avoided with a VPN, but it's a precedent
• in 2019, a law was accepted that introduced gun right limitations under the cover of Schengen regulations; the vote was presented as being about remaining in the Schengen space, not gun rights; our rights are still far greater than in most Schengen countries, e.g. we maintain our right to keep our military assault rifles; interestingly, the Czech Republic now allows gun carry with an easy-to-get permit; the same seems to be true for Bulgaria and Estonia, but I'll have to check the actual legal situation
• the COVID law was accepted last year after opponents were largely censored and denigrated by government and leftist media, while they spread misinformation about the virus and the actual threat (or lack thereof) 

The other methods used to change Switzerland are the same as everywhere else, starting with mass immigration!

During the 1990s, Switzerland accepted more than 500'000 refugees from ex-Yugoslavia, including 300'000 from Kosovo, most of whom settled permanently. That increased our population from 6.5 to 7 million. Since 2007, 1.5 million moved from the EU to Switzerland under the free movement of people agreement, along with about 100'000 "refugees".

The left now wants to lower the voting age to 16 for obvious and transparent reasons. They want all the little brainwashed morons to vote - the Greta generation.

Verdict

While not perfect, Direct Democracy is a great tool to restore power to the people. It is infinitely much better to have it than not to have it. Bad decisions can be corrected with renewed & adapted initiatives, especially after the majority realize that a previous decision didn't work out so well.

The US would benefit immensely if there were national referendum votes on:

• immigration
• COVID restrictions
• CRT
• policing
• government spending

etc.

One critique against Direct Democracy is that it requires a much high engagement as one has to understand fairly complex issues. That's not a drawback, that's an immense benefit! It means that only people who actually understand the issue - and care about it - will vote. Even a 20% participation rate is absolutely not a problem. That's about 20'000x more than the total number of politicians and bureaucrats who would otherwise make all the decisions affecting the entire population.