Comment by gruez
21 hours ago
>When lawmakers start actively going against the interests of society at large[...]
But how does banning subsequent attempts at passing bills prevent this? Moreover what's preventing this mechanism from being abused to block legislation that society actually want?
The tactic here is sneaking legislation through the system by bringing it up again and again, hoping for the public to eventually lose interest, or to catch a time with a lot of other drama going on so they can avoid the public attention/backlash.
I do think there are procedural ways to support this, like: proposed bills that are very similar to previous rejected ones need a preemptive vote with 60%+ support to be considered - if brought again with a certain time frame.
I do see your point though, there can be unforeseen consequences.
Good thing we have paid professionals whose job it is to vote on these things.
But the whole premise is that those paid professionals have gone rogue?
3 replies →
Newsflash: it's the paid professionals that are doing this...
It's those paid professionals that are the problem
> There should be sorts of an exponential backoff
So some cool off period that gets larger each time a bill fails. There is not a detailed proposal, but I would assume some max cool off period is reasonable/desirable as well.
So it could not be used to block legislation that society actually wants forever but it would block the legislature from passing it in a limited time frame.
Another reasonable addition that would work well at more local levels but would be a new challenge to implement at the national level in the USA is to have citizen lead referendums with minimum participation requirements to by pass this cool off period. That way if legislation is important the voters can bypass the cool off period.