Low-Tech Democracy.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

I'd say that for any really wide spread of the vote you need to have a wide spread of literacy and basic education. A peasant out in his field won't have much interest in anything outside his immediate interests unless he can read about the greater world beyond his village.

So? What's wrong with voting for whoever you think will best defend the interests of your village?

It's a barrier to a really efficient direct democracy, where you expect the voters to make choices on complicated issues for the good for the nation. For a representative democracy where government paralysis isn't necessarily considered a bad thing, it might be a virtue. As long as there is enough time between each election and the representative body meeting for all the elected representatives to travel to the same place, there don't seem to be any particular limitations on that.