link to original reddit post by /u/Derimade

We have seen just in this past year 2 major accusations of voter fraud, making many people start to doubt that we can hold "democratically elected" leaders accountable, but here I will defend the proposition that even if there was a 100% perfect method for avoiding all voter fraud, Democratic Accountability would still be a dodgy proposition.

What I am arguing and what I am not

-I am not arguing that the democratic process itself is illegitimate, or that democratic rulers have no right to rule, although I hold this belief, not here

-I am not arguing that the democratic process ultimately leads to bad policy (although it;s not too far removed from the logical conclusion)

-I am arguing solely that using the democratic process to hold political leaders accountable is not nearly as effective as widely believed.

1 : Voter Inertia, and the Spoiler Effect

We are (right now) under a "plurality" voting system (most votes wins) this leads to inevitable two-party system thanks to the "Spoiler Effect" Forget Republicans and Democrats, lets imagine we are voting for the Purple and Green Parties, but the Green party's candidate didn't live up to their promise, and so Purple party members start voting for a Yellow Party as it is the closest to what they really want, while still "holding the green party accountable" Now the Purple party is in power.

Even if you want to say "But they were held to accountability be being removed" it only worked in so far as it literally granted all power to the opposition. In order to vote somebody out you need hundreds if not thousands (if not millions) of people to be willing to hand the election over to their enemies, this is a really hard sell even under the best (or more accurately worse) of circumstances. Asking somebody to not vote for their candidate to hold them accountable is a hard sell.

This gets worse when you realize how much is a bundled package. Even if the Green candidate promised to cut spending by 25% but didn't cut at all, the Purple candidate is probably promising to raise the spending, do you want to let the opposite of what you asked for possibly happen just because your preferred candidate didn't do anything at all? And really think about for the typical voter (or even yourself) how many items on your political wish-list would your preferred candidate have to completely bomb before they even consider the other side? And even if you yourself are a puritan, thousands of others don't care and just want to get their part in office as much as they can.

Ok, so let's remove the plurality voting system, let's use a better system like Condorcet or Runoff or Borda, we can now hold them accountable right?

Wrong

2 : Time and Complexity

Elections happen every 2, 4 and 6 years, that's a long time. Ayn rand once noted that election day and tax day are as far apart on the calendar year as they can be, any policies or actions that happen during the "honeymoon" period or even in the middle of a cycle or term, tend to receive a lot of scrutiny, but do politicians care? Well, do you think the same critical fervor is going to be there 2 years from now? Do you even remember half the political scandals from 2-4 years ago?

The fact you are on this subreddit implies you spend a fair deal of your time worried about what the government is up to. Even if you remember what happened 2-4 years ago, how many other people do you think share your long memory span? They don;t need to look for for 4 years straight they only need to look good the weeks leading up to election, sure enough pressure, strikes, protests and what have you can happen during the interim period, but to keep their offices, they only need to look good enough for the few weeks leading up. And remember, thanks to the last point, they don't need to look 'good' per say, just better (even slightly) then their opponent. And even if voted out, the politician still got to enact their policies for a full 2, 4 or 6 years. Even when this works at all, it's a delayed effect with the exception of recall elections which still requires you get thousands to not just be fed up, but fed up enough to take specific action.

But even if a full list of all policies and actions could be neatly compiled for every voter to read the weeks leading up the election, problem solved? Not quite. How many bills passed have you read? No, I don;t mean know the general idea of what they said, I mean how many have you sat down to actually read through the whole bill? My guess : 0. Most people have only a surface level idea of what their government is up to at any given moment. The obvious rebuttal to this is that the major points or the general idea of a policy is enough for most voters to determine if they like it or not. However, who are you hearing the policy from? I have seen so many debates that essentially amount not so much to what certain policy items are bad but what policy items even are! (does anyone even know what CRT actually is, I ask 10 different people, I get 10 different answers). Ask republicans what our immigration policy is they think it's open boarders, ask democrats and they think it's completely impossible to get through. This isn't a disagreement over weather our current border policy is good or bad, it;s a disagreement over what our current border policy even is. How can political actors be held accountable for their policies and decisions if nobody can even seem to figure out what they are?

This isn't because of malice, this is pure consequence of the fact government laws are so numerous and far-reaching that even the with the best of intentions and most clear o reasoning, it gets complicated pretty quick. (Not that we have any reason to believe our leaders have such noble intentions, just saying ti wouldn't matter if they did)

Even when policies are more clear and understood, remember the news usually only reports on the more sensational or eye-catching ones, how many government actions go under the public notice for this very reason.

Even if every policy was on full display for everyone, we get back to the knowledge problem, politicians in Washington don't know whats best for suburbs in idaho, and suberbians in Idaho don't know what's best for New York City, the knowledge problem here becomes one of every person in every place making decisions for everyone else everywhere else.

This is ignoring a more urgent and obvious reality : 90% of news coverage focuses on SCOTUS .the president, and a few congress members. What about local and state leaders? Most Americans can't even name their state senators, congressmen, let alone state legislators. Many decisions are delegated to federal departments and agencies. Sure voting out the guy who appointed them might get them a bit of accountability but only if enough voters make the conscious connection.

Ok, so let;s make it so every law must be in clear English, let's put a "complexity limit"on decisions they make, let's pull decision making downward to the more local levels, severely limit the decision making power of agents not directly elected, actually, let's implement a direct democracy or liquid democracy (look it up, it's a pretty cool concept) to solve these problems, and finally, just to get this out of the way let's assume all voters had classical economist level perfect knowledge. Now they will hold their leaders accountable? Maybe, but we still have reasons to doubt.

3 : Legal rigging

Ok, so at the start I assumed no voter Fraud, but there are many ways to skin a cat, and many ways to rig an election. One of the more famous being gerrymandering. Other items include moving the voting date to be inconvenient for a certain voting black, moving the polling booths, bribing the electorate, blackmailing the electorate, Making the process of voting harder for some groups but easier for others, etc.

But hey, let's use the shortest split-line method to remove gerrymandering, let's have a pure mail in your ballot anytime withing a few weeks system, while assuming that this system will not be subject to fraud of any kind. Now we can finally with all of these methods (Preferential voting, perfect information, and a completely free and open election) Finally they will hold their leaders accountable, right?

Wrong!

4 : Voter irrationality

As Bryan Caplan demonstrated in his Book "The myth of the rational voter" (Great book, highly recommend it), rationality should be thought of as an economic good. People need to "purchase rationality at the following costs:

-Cognitive effort

-Risk of losing belief systems and therefore comfort

-Suppressing biases (sunk cost being a big one here since one people voice support for a guy, they don't want to be wrong)

-Social backlash (your friends may not support your decision)

-Among other hings

But usually it comes with the benefit of the material accumulation that comes with rational market decision making. Unfortunately, democracy is a commons. Most people are willing to swallow their pride for a better job, but are they willing to swallow their pride to make the president lose their job?

To illiterate, let's imagine an election with only 3 voters, 2 candidates and 1 policy issue, weather or not to declare war. If voter A and B have already cast their vote and both claim to have voted for the same side, whichever side it is voter C will have no electoral power over the election. If he thinks that war would mean getting him and his family killed, he might as well vote for war anyways since his vote won't affect the outcome of the election.

Go ahead, research all you want, go ahead, put your total cognitive effort into finding out the absolute best policies, go ahead, pick apart every proposal into their most atomized part, program a thousand simulations per second computer that can estimate to millionth decimal the exact effects of every possible outcome of the election to find the supremely optimal choice, it doesn't matter because the guy next to you, doesn't care. They will put their own psychological comfort over material well being since voting has no material costs, but does have tribal costs, the cost of changing your mind.

Rational Voting is an act of charity, one most people will prefer tribalism over preforming.

Holding politicians accountable requires you to not just convince people they are bad, but bad enough to let the enemy tribe win, most people have no incentive to think rationality about the costs and benefits of such a proposal, they would rather keep to their tribes.

Making the decisions "closer to home" may help by bringing the effects to broad daylight and minimizing the number of people you need to convince, but it's not a silver bullet

Conclusion :

It is possible to make the system better and more accountable (Preferential voting systems, liquid democracy, clear consistent rules, Localization or con-federalism (federalism on steroids)). But there is no silver bullet. Protests, strikes, massive popular backlash can also affect things but these things are hard, inconvenient and are not exactly democratic, so my point still holds.

Whenever somebody proposes we give power on the basis that democratic leaders can be held democratically accountable, remember the practicality of making that happen in the real world.