Quote Originally Posted by it-ogo View Post
At a deeper level than propaganda the strong point of contemporary Democracy TM is recognized as a system of checks and balances, which provides an effective mechanism of the rotation of personalities in power and allows to avoid avalanche-like accumulation of errors by one person or small group of persons (which is typical for not so well balanced systems).
I like this crisp summary and that is exactly what I believe when I feel positive about democracy.

If the process that it-ogo describes could be "boxed-in" and completely "protected" from outside contamination, then probably would be ok, I think.

But capital enters into this equation in the form of media and sponsorship and essentially poisons the process from one angle.
And the simplemindedness of the voters ruins it from another angle. It is absolutely not a joke that some parties with handsome leaders get more votes, for example.

Perhaps the solution might be some kind of "neutral" body that watches over the democratic process, regulates it and punishes those who don't stick to certain rules.

Election campaigns ought to be finananced out of equally large pots for all parties with no opportunities for any party to have a superior or more impressive campaign due to having more rich sponsors.

It should be completely banned to focus on the personality of the party leader - after all, it's an ideology and a political party that is being assessed, not the looks, background or reputation of the leader.

I do not approve of th idea of having a special democratic "quota" for women in the parliament and party positions (Sweden has this) is ridiculous. The gender of the person does not make them any more or less qualified. Sure, she is more likely to look after womens rights, but if women have 50% of the votes this should take care of womens rights without manipulating the system and queuejumping unqualified women into a position in the parliament or a ministerial post.

I like the idea that I just came up with, of a neutral overseeing body that stricly controlled the fairness of the political campaigns and the political process in general. They would have to have lots of power, but only for this particular task, nothing else.

The members of this body should be paid very high salaries so they are not susceptible to any kind of manipulation, and serve for a given length of time - say 5-10 years. The challenge would be how to appoint them. Perhaps there could simply be some kind of extremely challenging entry examination that only the cleverest and most well-read would pass, and then pick the oldest applicants who pass the test, or the ones with the highest score.