Reforming Democracy via Corrective Democracy

At the FEE.org, Chapman University law professor Tom W. Bell posits of how to reform democracy: Corrective Democracy

A corrective democracy allows voters to do only one thing: Strike down a specified rule. Voters would get a fair shot at any law, regulation, ordinance, or order that offends them. If it failed the corrective vote, the rule would get removed from the books. Think of it as the electoral equivalent of jury nullification.

Corrective democracy qualifies as a type of “disapproval voting,” the general name applied to systems that allow only votes against certain choices. Disapproval voting has seen use in a number of contexts, most famously on reality game shows where participants can vote each other off but also, and more conventionally, in recall elections and no-confidence votes. (Disapproval voting has not evidently attracted much formal study, however, or been put to the broad political use advocated here.)

A corrective democracy could not be used to create a government agency or program; creating new institutions would require the passage of new laws. Corrective democracy thus comes with a powerful built-in limitation. Even if the lazy and vicious outnumber the industrious and virtuous—a tragic but unlikely situation—they could not use a corrective democracy to give themselves bread and circuses.

Legislative bodies hardly ever attempt to assess on whether the rules or edicts they pass have been effective or not. Yet most of them have been designed to have short term impact meant to generate votes.

And in the absence or dearth of sunset provision, mounting number of legislation leads to increasing politicization of the marketplace, thus economic repression and lesser civil liberties. 

Corrective democracy comes with a “skin on the game”, again Professor Bell

How to provide open access to corrective democracy without wasting time on futile votes? Let anyone call an election on any rule, but make losers pay the costs. Apart from perhaps requiring that challengers post bond, this system would let anyone target any law, regulation, ordinance, or order. Elections in a corrective democracy could thus arise directly from voters themselves, the popular will unmediated by party politics, electoral commissions, or arcane devices like the Electoral College.

Corrective democracy as a check on government.

Corrective democracy offers democracy, corrected. Because it operates only to trim back government excesses, corrective democracy runs little risk of degenerating into mob rule. It thus gives voters a more direct say in their government without giving them direct access to power. 

Corrective democracy is not a lesser form of democracy, however. To the contrary, it affords a safe means to broaden the voting franchise and open up public access to the initiative process. Corrective democracy does not solve every problem of governance—somebody still has to write the rules, for instance—but it does improve on current political mechanisms. Corrective democracy turns voting from a blunt scepter for wielding political power into a sharp sword for defending individual rights.