[EM] Silver Linings in Alaska

[Joe Weinstein]

Alex,

I suspect you are largely right.

It's pretty clear that voters either now or in the near future will demand 
more than mere nay-saying to actually or allegedly bad reforms.  They will 
want to vote FOR something new.

Lately my thinking has been that anyhow even the best election-method reform 
will be sham - a diversion from real democracy that makes a real difference 
- so long as we continue to use mass elections to select or legitimize or 
rubberstamp a governing officer oligarchy.

There is no need for media-manipulable mass elections.  They can be replaced 
by small-scale deliberative ('collegial') elections within random samples of 
voters.  In other words, elections need be used only in situations of the 
sort where in fact new election methods can easily be put into use and 
tested.

Joe Weinstein
Long Beach CA USA



_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com

----
For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), 
please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em