[EM] Mae West was interested in voting methods?

[Jan Kok]

On 4/2/07, Howard Swerdfeger <electorama.com at howard.swerdfeger.com> wrote:
> 1.)
> I became aware of proxy democracy over a year ago. I find it interesting
> from a intellectual standpoint. I think it could make a fine democratic
> system. However, I do not believe the the people of the world are
> anywhere near ready to implement/accept such a system. I think it would
> be most useful to medium to large size groups or organizations for now.
> In the mean time I feel no obligation to promote "proxy democracy" as I
> am most interested in democratic reform at the provincial/Country level,
> and I feel "proxy democracy" will not achievable or acceptable to the
> people for many many years, with many changes to our democracy between
> now and then. I prefer to focus on the next evolutionary step.

Do you agree that some good might come if people on different sides of
an issue would talk to each other?

If so, consider creating a River Province Open Forum, which would be
an FA/DP. To the people of your province, it might seem like just
another discussion group. What would be possibly unique about it are
that it would be neutral on all issues, and welcome participants from
all sides of an issue, and it would also be very general in scope,
i.e. any issue that might be related to what the provincial government
does or how the government is structured would be on-topic for the
forum. Also, there would be a proxy list. (Perhaps newcomers should be
encouraged to choose a proxy about a week after they join, so they can
continue to be represented even if they go inactive. It's typical that
only about 10% of newsgroup members are "active" in any sense.) And
there should be some mechanism for conducting polls.

Once you've created the forum somewhere, you should be able to gather
some members by sending invitations to whatever provincial political
newsgroups you belong to, and make announcements to newspapers (write
soapbox articles, etc.).

I think the main selling points, for attracting participants, are the
ideas of providing a neutral environment where people on all sides on
an issue can get together and try to reach consensus; the idea of
focusing on issues that are coming up in the provincial legislature,
or that might be proposed to the legislature; and the availability of
a polling mechanism that could monitor the degree of consensus on any
particular issue. The results of such polls could be reported to
legislators and anyone else that might be interested.

If the forum attracts many members and is representative in political
makeup of the province, _and_ if the polls are honest, then the forum
could become quite influential, because it would be a strong statement
of the will of the people if a poll resulted in 90% of the members
being for some particular position or solution.

If the forum does become influential, then there is some incentive for
people to corrupt the polls to their advantage. How to avoid that?
- Make it part of the culture of the forum that proxies are
responsible for verifying that any clients they accept are who they
say they are. In order to avoid one person masquerading as several, it
would probably be necessary for the proxy list to use people's real
names. For a bit of additional security, add the person's street
number or the last three digits of their phone number, etc. If a proxy
is found to have accepted a fake or duplicate person, just post a note
to the forum reporting the evidence. The credibility of that proxy
would go down if it happened more than once, and people would start to
discount votes associated with the proxy's supposed constituency.
- Make the polls open (no secret ballots). Then anyone can interpret
the ballots however they like.

Thanks for your interest, Howard. I hope it continues and grows.

Cheers,
- Jan