[EM] non-binding direct democracy system

[Ernest Prabhakar]

[I'd suggest the name Condorcet Polling, as I think that captures your 
essential features more concisely]

Hi James,

> 	Anyway, again I agree that your question is the logical next step to 
> look
> in. I have made a couple suggestions here; what do you think?

Not bad.   Actually, I think something like Shadow Ministers might be 
the right way to go.    However, rather than run them as a shadow 
government, I almost think of it as a shadow think tank: the goal is to 
build a broad exposure towards a richer suite of options; I (naively, 
perhaps :-) believe that better ideas -- properly presented and widely 
exposed -- will ultimately drive out worse ideas.

The easiest way to do this, in IMHO, would be to get some eminent 
university to create a Shadow Parliament.    There's usually a wide 
range of politically active students, which ensures diversity, and 
hopefully a few clueful professors to help manage the process.   True, 
the demographic proportionality may not match mainstream America, but 
that's beside the point: the goal is to come up with a list of options, 
so the ratios are more or less unimportant.

If we could get a place like, say, Harvard, Berkeley, or even MIT to 
create such a Parliament, and periodically issue Condorcet Internet 
Polls on the hot issues of the day, it would very likely generate media 
interest.  One could imagine limiting it to registered students 
(perhaps even at other schools) to avoid excessive ballot stuffing.  It 
would get (fairly) criticized for not being scientific, but that might 
generate enough enthusiasm for some real pollster to start using the 
technique.

At any rate, I think the crucial 'bootstrap' process for any such idea 
is to find a small, savvy, high-visibility group to prove it out, like 
Debian did for Condorcet.  That allows one to tweak the system and 
build credibility before facing the harsh media glare -- a method I 
recommended for my own TOAD proposal 
<http://radicalcentrism.org/debate_truth.html>,

I nominate Ohio, as that's the only place I know of with a student 
Radical Centrist party <http://www.ohioradicalmiddle.com/>. :-)

-- Ernie P.

On Mar 26, 2004, at 10:06 AM, James Green-Armytage wrote:

> 	Another possibility which I find somewhat interesting would be to 
> create
> a sort of shadow government using the DD system. That is, once every 
> year
> or two, you could have a popular vote, probably based on Meek STV or
> CPO-STV (with no district boundaries), to select a certain number of
> individuals (I don't know how many). For yucks I will call them Shadow
> Ministers, which is in my opinion the coolest title for any real 
> political
> office. A shadow minister would be authorized to sponsor alternative
> options to be put onto DD ballots. Perhaps they would be given a 
> certain
> number of sponsorships per year which they could not exceed. Also, they
> might be able to generate one or two separate issues per year as well.
> They would be paid a modest amount which would allow them to keep their
> own time available for the job and hire a small office staff. They 
> would
> not need to generate all the ideas themselves. Instead, people from 
> across
> the land would contact them with suggestions, and they would sponsor 
> the
> suggestions if they believed them to have merit.
> 	So far I like the shadow minister idea. It fits along with my general
> notion that since the legal government is too power-bound and deeply 
> set
> in its ways to change sufficiently and with sufficient speed, an
> alternative process based on more effectively democratic principles 
> should
> be created to supplement the elements which it lacks. Exactly how
> threatening mainstream politicians would find this notion, I'm not 
> sure. I
> suppose it depends on just how sinister you actually think they are. It
> seems to me that they might find the shadow minister suggestion a bit 
> more
> threatening than the rest of it, since it clearly implies that the
> congress isn't able to do what it's supposed to do, that is listening 
> to
> the voice of the people and transforming their more meritorious ideas 
> into
> law.