St. Paul, Minnesota, has an all-woman city council for the first time in its history — and experts say it may be the largest U.S. city to ever have an all-woman council.
St. Paul, Minnesota, has an all-woman city council for the first time in its history — and experts say it may be the largest U.S. city to ever have an all-woman council.
Because a diverse group of people are able to provide new insights into those programs. As long as people are stuck with representative democracy, it’s beneficial to get differing voices in. Historically those voices have been silenced, so there needs to be a bit of concerned effort to get them heard and catch up on the ‘backlog’.
We really need direct democracy with people free to vote on issues themselves without having to try to find someone who’s looking out for what they’re going through as a representative.
Nah, it would be abused. Politicians, as much as we all hate them, work as a kind of filter ensuring that proper processes are followed. Passing laws is not easy, that’s why professionals do it. A referendum from time to time is a good thing but if people were to directly vote on all the issues they would quickly get tired and some minority with agenda would start sneaking in their laws everywhere.
As to getting different voices in you can also have expert groups and public consultations. I definitely see the benefits of electing minority representatives but I think focusing on sex/race like that is still pretty silly thing to do and hope one day we’ll grow out of identity politics.
Yeah, direct democracy is awful, Switzerland is hell on Earth.
First of all, it’s not as nice as you would think. Second, they represent exactly what I described a ‘nice to have’: a referendum from time to time. They still have politicians and normal government. Since you present it as a counter argument looks like you completely misunderstood what I said. Third, even there shit can happen: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/11/switzerland-court-overturns-referendum-as-voters-were-poorly-informed (you decide for yourself if it’s an example of government protecting citizens from a bad decision they made or courts overriding will of the people).