All us WEIRD (western educated industrialized rich democratic) countries seem to spend a really embarrassing amount of time talking about the pointless minutiae surrounding our candidates for office and their personal lives.

We are also prone to backing very crap candidates based on personality, rhetoric, appearance ie: things that have nothing to do with being a good executive or legislator.

I think we should ban names from the election process and just have each party submit their ideas in writing and let people vote based on those submissions.

  • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    21 days ago

    This is the idea behind direct ballot measures. Instead of working through representatives, just let people make actual decisions. Of course, there are problems with it. You wind up looking at a ballot with 10 different bond measures on it as if you’re in any position to decide on the budgets for 6 different agencies. And all the voter guides scream contradictory things at you from the pro/con positions, leaving you thinking “gee, maybe politician is actually a profession after all?”

  • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    21 days ago

    I actually sort of like this idea. People would still figure it out, of course, but it’d shift people’s default attention from the person to the platform.

  • MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    21 days ago

    Yes. You should be presented with a set of multiple choice questions where the answers are each of the parties stances on the matter and at the end your vote should be divided among the parties based on how you answered the questions.

    • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      21 days ago

      That would require parties to follow through on their platforms to work.

      For example, Republicans say they value life but do the opposite by forcing women to die because they can’t access medical care for unviable pregnancies. They say they want border reform but vote against bills that would fund the courts that process immigrants. They say they willl lower taxes for the common person, but lower it for the top 1% and raise them for everyone else.

      Platforms are great and all if they meant anything.

  • angrystego@lemmy.world
    2·
    20 days ago

    I think that would be great - if people were incapable of lying. As it is, the candidate with the most people-pleasing program (true or not) would win and you wouldn’t be able to check their past activities to see whether they’re trustworthy at all.