Direct legislature

Today we can send our tax return over the internet, then why not vote over the internet also?

The negative aspects of a direct legislature may be approached from differing perspectives.

Socio-political: Important national issues may be decided by the wider masses that are not qualified to make a decision. For example, ‘should the Deutschmark be reintroduced in Germany?’ Perhaps only an economist can attempt to answer such a question.

Privacy: Voting in a democracy is in generally a personal affair. With a direct democracy this may not be the case anymore as an IT engineer (contracted by sinister parties) can often figure out a way of tracking who voted for what, or forcing the voter to leave a trail.

Accountability: A paper voting system has a form of accountability built in, in the sense that the voter sees his paper going into a ballot box. The ballot box is supervised at all times. The counters of the votes are supervised. The votes can always be recounted if a suspicion of error or fraud arises. An audit trail is not so visible to the user in a computerised voting system, if in fact it is at all possible, and compatible with privacy.

Technical: Current networking technologies are susceptible to varying Issues Security outrages - Identity theft, - Data theft, - Denial of Service A serious misuse of the internet in a direct democracy would undermine that democracy.

Reliability: - Technical failure is a real possibility. The internet is designed to be robust against outrages, but within a smaller country there will not be so many alternate routes and other technical equipment.