[EM] danger of coercion (Re: First U.S. Scientific Election Audit...)

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:26 AM 5/14/2007, raphfrk at netscape.net wrote:
>His proposed solution is that each student would be given a yes/no 
>button.  They can
>then answer questions using the button.  This would not achieve 
>perfect privacy, but
>it would likely greatly increase the accuracy of the result.  He 
>could then repeat any
>section of the lecture that doesn't hit a threshold.

Fine idea for lectures. Not so great for responsible voting. When a 
measure is opposed, democratic process suggests that those in favor 
of it can ask those opposed why they opposed it, and perhaps then 
some compromise or other steps can be taken to approach consensus. 
This is what actually happens in direct democracy.

>Something similar could be used in a town meeting type 
>setting.  OTOH, it might break
>the consensus building effect of the town meeting.  If there is no 
>penalty in acting to
>prevent consensus, then it is less likely to occur.

Raph really ought to find an opportunity to actually attend a real 
Town Meeting, or to otherwise become familiar with what goes on at 
them. They generally operate in a consensus-seeking mode. Town 
Meeting is not, essentially, political. People are not generally 
posturing. They are townspeople, who know each other, trying to 
decide what is best for the town.

Is there a problem with hidden dissent? Perhaps. But it will not be 
solved with buttons and technology like that. And, remember, Town 
Meeting would have to approve the procedure and the expenditure (if 
any were involved). They do not perceive the process as broken. How 
are you going to convince them that it is, enough to think that they 
should stop merely talking with each other and voting, usually by 
voice vote. Most votes are not at all controversial.

There was one exception: a Town Meeting that I attended (townsperson 
Rachel Maddow was there and so were many more than the usual number 
of attendees) was considering a resolution to request Massachusetts 
representatives to withdraw Mass National Guard forces from Iraq. It 
was passionately debated, most speakers being for the resolution. 
There were only two exceptions: one very angry young man and one of 
the members of the Board of Selectmen. The latter is the same person 
as I mention below. His argument was actually correct, the U.S. has 
obligations under international law that it cannot, legally, simply 
walk away from. The resolution was black and white: out ASAP. When 
the vote was called, I think there were only two dissenting votes, 
the two who had spoken. While I agreed with the moderator, the vote 
was only advisory and I'd presume that our representatives would 
fully consider the legal issues and, as we are seeing with Congress, 
not take drastic action without attempting to find good ways to do it.

I have directly proposed FA/DP as a solution to what problems *do* 
exist with Town Meeting, and it would also address the particular 
issue here. What I ran into was a general agreement that FA/DP 
sounded like a great idea. And unnecessary. I see the problems that 
would make FA/DP into a means to greatly amplify and facilitate good 
communication between the town government, Town Meeting, and all the 
citizens, not just those who can attend meetings. No changes in law 
are required, just a number of town citizens beginning to participate 
in a Town Free Association. Probably the most popular man in the town 
through the idea was fantastic. He scheduled a meeting at his church 
to talk about it. The only people who showed up were myself, him, and 
his wife. Nice conversation.

People do not see the system as broken. And largely, it is not. But 
it could still be much better, with no additional expense. (A member 
of the Board of Selectmen, brilliant guy, likewise liked the FA/DP 
idea, but his comment was that the existing system works just fine, 
if you want to get involved, you can. His one fear was that the FA 
would distract people from participating on Town Committees, which 
are already notoriously difficult to find members for. It would not 
really be a problem, because FA/DP does not create some new 
time-consuming meeting structure. It uses already-existing structures 
for expression, and what it *adds* would simply be townspeople 
talking to each other in a slightly more structured way. But the 
impact could be great.

Very hard to get people to see this. They *don't* have reasons that 
they express as to why it won't work, but there is just a huge 
barrier of assumption in place. It took several years of me harping 
away at it to finally get a few people to look deeper, and we have 
not found that looking deeper causes people to look away....