Absolute Majority – any majority that takes into account all voters, including abstainers, in determining the absolute majority threshold
Abstention – the large fraction of citizens whose indifference, infirmity or indecision has left them without any voice whatsoever, even though the fraction of abstentions is generally larger than the simple majority won between the remaining voters who did cast a vote.
Bill of Rights – a formal declaration of rights of citizens that may or may not be entrenched with constitutionality
Concentration of Power – this flows directly from the concentration of wealth
Concentration of Wealth – the result of the market system not achieving a Pareto efficient allocation of resources because of preconditions for that system to work can never be fully met, specifically fully informed agents (buyers) and equal access to production market (sellers), neither of which can be met, and causes wealth to concentrate, and resources to be allocated inefficiently
Constitution – a set of fundamental principles, policies and procedures that constitute the entity, or nation
Constitutional Democracy – a democracy ruled by the people in a constitutional framework. modification of the constitution, in most cases, requires a supermajority of representatives
Democracy – literally means rule by the people, but has become interchangeable with representative democracy, but still significantly different from it in reality.
direct democracy – this term was invented because the term democracy had already become conflated with “representative democracy” and so this qualification of “direct“ness being added to democracy shows that it is actually rule by the people, for real. The fact that a new additional prefix term had to be added to the term democracy that already means rule by the people, shows how entrenched is the fact of representational democracy as being “normal” democracy.
Double Majority – 66% of any qualified voters on an issue; a 2:1 majority
Election – a handy tool for the powerful and wealthy elite to stifle democracy by encouraging the public to vote for people to represent their interests, rather than voting on the issues themselves.
Initiative – any issue raised and voted on by the public or representatives to become a law
Liberal Democracy – a form of government by representative democracy, comprised of competitive elections of people, and separation of powers into branches of government, usually a tri-partite system as described by Baron de Montesquieu where a separation of powers exists between a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary.
Minority – this is what keeps winning elections, keeps passing bogus legislation to which we all must adhere, and keeps wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the few, dressed up as a “simple majority”
Monarchy – a form of government in which sovereignty is vested in one individual; a dictatorship by bloodline, by divine right, unless it is tempered within a constitutional framework and the parliamentary process is accessible, at least, by representatives.
Multi-point Biometric Voter ID – term for tying voter identification to their own singular biometrics, like eye scan, fingerprint or facial recognition, which ideally would be encrypted and anonymous
Representative – every single politician to ever hold office, stands guilty of this charge of “representation” which ought to become labelled as the slur that it is, considering how poorly representatives actually represent the people they claim to
Republic – this is a form of government in which the power is said to reside in the people, although again as with the similar term, representative democracy, the power is vested in representatives, not actually the people themselves. over half of the world’s current 206 sovereign states identify themselves as a republic.
Proposal - a term often interchangeable with initiative, relating to ballots and what ought to be put on them, for the public or representatives to vote on
Quorum – the minimum stated requirement of number of voters necessary to be present in order to hold a vote on any initiative
Simple Majority – anything over 50% of the qualified voters on an issue
Supermajority – anything significantly higher than 50% majority of qualified voters on an issue.
Tyranny – this is the current form of government, dressed up as a democracy, but not truly democratic because representation is an invalid statistical sampling of the public, because representatives are open to exploitation by moneyed interests and their own self interest, which for most politicians, supersedes their fiduciary responsibilities
Wealth – the thing that keeps concentrating in the hands of the few (the bottom 80% of the population own merely 7% of the wealth) because the market system cannot properly achieve a Pareto efficient allocation of resources, because all agents in the system aren’t ever fully informed buyers, and all agents in the system never have equal access to the production market. this concentration of wealth also stifles competition and keeps prices high, above their natural price
WikInitiave Database – a conceived Marketplace of Initiatives where every citizen has free, easy, electronic access to all ballot initiatives, using a Reddit-style vote up system, where when any initiative passes a supermajority, it becomes law. with a database such as this, all initiatives can be measured in real time for their public support, abstentions count as “no” (to err on the side of liberty) and people can even change their vote on any issue at any time.
Veto – a method of blocking legislation either by president, by minority or supermajority vote