[EM] Re: non-binding direct democracy system

[Joe Weinstein]

I don't have much time for most ins and outs on this list (or others), but 
was delighted to read James' stimulatingly-argued detailed proposal for a 
'non-binding direct democracy system'.

Rather than run to endorse or reject this single proposal (as it stands or 
as it gets amended), I think it would be wise to ask just what objectives it 
would achieve, and - even more important - what objectives it's aimed at, 
and then what our other options may include for realizing them.

In particular, as James indicates, we badly do need more and better citizen 
participation, and James is quite right: it is not fair - and it is also not 
necessary - that citizen opinion should have to be filtered through an 
entrenched oligarchy of a few 'representatives'.

In interests of accuracy and relevance I do take issue with some statements 
made pro or con the proposal.

First, in order to learn where the public stands, there is nothing wrong 
with properly conducted opinion polling.  Potentially tremendous expense and 
bother may be saved, and reasonable and useful accuracy may be achieved.  
It's been done in effect even by the Census Bureau as well as many 
nongovernment organizations.  And, altho contrary to most people's 
intuitions, it's very basic statistical theory that when you are truly 
randomly polling a large population, your accuracy in determining a 
proportion P (namely, of the citizens who prefer YES rather than NO on a 
given question) has almost nothing to do with the size of FRACTION of the 
population being sampled, but just of the ABSOLUTE number being sampled.   
The accuracy you can expect by sampling 1,000 out of 100,000,000 is 
negligibly worse than what you get by sampling 1,000 out of 10,000.   The 
number 1,000 fairly well guarantees getting within 3% of the right answer in 
95% of the cases, and almost inevitably within 5% - no matter how small 
1,000 is as a fraction of total population.

But suppose that on a given issue your aim is that the sampled individuals 
represent especially deliberative and informed opinion - untypical of most 
hitherto uninvolved citizens, but clearly called for in responsible 
decision-making. Then there is every reason to use randomly selected citizen 
study and advisory juries (in the manner already demonstrated and used by 
the Jefferson Foundation) for advice and opinion on various public 
questions.

Second, I don't see the point of some banter on the proper election method 
to use in the proposed referenda.  If a referendum is NON-binding, for the 
purpose of INFORMING public and politicos, then what counts is the press' 
careful summaries of the data by whatever means (I hope several) that they 
might be induced (by conscientious political scientists??) to use - and not 
your (or the government's) pick of the single 'true winner' by an annointed 
'ideal' election method.

Offhand, for the sake of sufficient but manageable depth and complexity, it 
seems that a workable referendum question might best ask the public to rate 
or rank somewhere between three and five alternatives.  A 5 x 5 pairwise 
matrix (not more), plus other summary info, just might be comprehensible to 
participants, press, and summary-reading public and pols.

As both Ernie and James note, a key issue is the method by which issues and 
alternatives are agendized and organized for referenda or polls.  As Ernie 
points out, some university departments would have credibility.  Mandated 
issues or positions should include those submitted by initiative - of 
sufficiently many citizens or of sufficiently many legislators.

My main carp with the proposal - but not specifically with just this 
proposal - is that in itself it does not go very far to realize what I deem 
REAL 'direct' democracy.  (In itself, it would improve on where we ae now, 
but we should not exaggerate what it would achieve.)  For me real democracy 
does not mean mass elections or referenda wherein individual votes are 
powerless.  What's really called for is not lots of voting but good 
decision-making.  The prime legitimate purpose of government is not 
elections or voting (and still less offices) but deliberative policy 
decision-making.

For me, genuine 'democracy' and just plain good sense in public 
decision-making BOTH argue for sharing as widely as we can, as equally as 
possible among all citizens (certainly among all the many citizens who are 
willing and able), the key task (in both its powers and burdens) of 
DELIBERATIVE public policy DECISION-making.   This calls for 
'representative' democracy, if you like, but where the representatives 
aren't the same bunch of overworked or over-pampered oligarchs (elected, but 
oligarchs) for decision after decision after decision.

It's really not a very arcane issue:  Why should we continue the practice of 
concentrating decision power so as to stimulate case after case of Lord 
Acton's dictum that 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts 
absolutely'?  Each well-deliberated decision requires special attention from 
relatively few people but why should myriad decisions over extended time be 
hogged by or dumped on the same few people?

Yes, I know, randomly picked juries (alias teams, panels, assemblies) don't 
seem interesting here, because you don't have to use interesting (or any) 
mass election methods to choose them.  However, for jury choice there's 
plenty of room for various Proportional Representation considerations - 
known in the statistical trade as proportional-allocation stratification 
schemes.  Also, there is plenty of use for election methods used internally 
within larger juries (whose sizes may be in the hundreds) to help them come 
to good and well-accepted collective decisions.

And, if random choices (simple, or stratified random P.R.) are not your 
thing, OK, suggest another valid and unbiased and maybe sexier method to 
recruit a large number of people to a bit of interesting and empowered 
responsible public service - which is what democracy is about.

James and Ernie and everyone - thanks for the provocative proposals and 
comments!

Joe Weinstein
Long Beach CA USA


P.S.  (for those with a lot of patience):

>From my local vantage of the last twelve years - Long Beach, California - 
James' proposal (like some other ideas here on this list) has (with no shame 
or blame on James) another big inherent defect.

Namely, the proposal is based on the presumption that politicians would want 
to know and maybe even heed what the public wants - or anyhow thinks it 
wants.

That's definitely not true in this town.

Most outsiders know Long Beach - a town of a half million people 
(California's fifth city - after LA, SD, SJ, SF) - for its touristic veneer 
which features a famous old (and in fact mismanaged and mistreated) ocean 
liner, a boondoggle convention center and aquarium, and remnants of a once 
excellent namesake beach.  But in recent decades and right now, whether from 
ignorance or connivance, our local politicians have been mainly interested 
in turning this town into a high-diesel-pollution job-destroying 
neighborhood-destroying mechanized super-port (and, on the side, airport, 
and feeder freeways).

Over the years and especially lately they've succeeded in getting lots of US 
taxpayer funds - with the blessing of both pro-big-city-govt-burocracy 
'liberals' and pro-big-biz 'conservatives' - to help them do this.  You see, 
our port is now nationally important 'vital infrastructure'; it's half of 
the LA-Long Beach port complex that handles nearly half of all US imports - 
a key part of Bush et al.'s ongoing tax-subsidized force-fed 'free' trade 
campaign to 'outsource' all manner of work from the USA, and to encourage 
import of ever more of ever cheaper foreign goods for the ever fewer people 
who still have US jobs to pay for them.

The local pols' latest brilliant idea - albeit wisely rejected by all other 
proposed localities in the nation, and endorsed mainly just by Bush's Energy 
Secretary - is to actually invite an LNG (liquified natural gas) terminal 
into the port, next to densely settled downtown.  Never mind 9/11 or the 
Algerian disaster or that the city is rightly supposed to be worried about 
possible terrorism targeting the port as a chokepoint of US commerce - 
anyhow on that account the city already collects 'anti-terrorism security' 
US taxpayer subsidies.   But the LNG terminal, and the tankers to it, would 
offer additional advantages: both to spendthrift politicians (more port-rent 
dollars) and to Al Qaeda (prospects of a lovely burn-explode event which 
could not only knock out the port but now also in the bargain kill or 
imperil thousands of nearby people and billions of dollars of real estate).

There are lots of immigrant and poor people here - in the USA we were #37 
but now for poverty proportion we're #10 - and #1 in California.  City 
management loves it - more and more federal assistance-to-local-government 
poverty-impact grants that actual poor people rarely see.

Most people here pay no attention to public affairs.  They are new 
immigrants or otherwise are too busy making near-poverty wages, or are 
transient students, or are retirees from elsewhere who came here to sleep in 
the sun and forget anything like the political and social problems of their 
former hometowns, or simply grew up here and know no different.

Local pols and their city hall beaurocrat friends usually insist not merely 
on doing their things, but moreover on doing them their way.  A citizen's 
independent agreement and proferred aid, let alone opposition, is usually 
not appreciated.  Every few years, they relent at times and appoint some 
proper new people to the near-powerless but important-sounding citizen 
advisory committees whose recommendations, if they don't match what is 
desired on the record as 'public input', are duly filed in the circular 
files.

TV 'news' is 'metro' and long ago gave up pretense of meaningful coverage of 
local affairs.  Meanwhile the LA Times also does not cover our local 
misdeeds and their critics: Long Beach does not really fit in their scheme 
either as a mere jolly 'suburb' or as part of the city of LA.

So most of the few people here who bother voting at all simply follow 
instructions, including cute write-in instructions, in the local see-no-evil 
(or, at any rate, assign-no-blame) news-rag.

All this just in case you wondered where ever did I get the idea - rather 
new to me two years ago after over five decades of following politics - that 
elections and good election methods are not quite enough.

Joe

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