[EM] the 'who' and the 'what'

[Michael Allan]

Fred Gohlke wrote:
> This is in response to your message to me on September 8th.
>
> You describe what you have in mind via at least one level of abstraction 
> and, for me, that adds a degree of difficulty.  For example, and please 
> forgive me obtuseness, I don't understand your closing paragraph:
>
>  "The point of my post is that we can actually do this today.
>   It opens up an interesting question.  In your own words:
>   Would the voters be deciding on the 'who' and the 'what' in
>   the form of candidates for the ballot, and norms for action?
>   Or would they really (as McLuhan might suggest) be deciding
>   on the whole electoral system?"

Sorry, I was trying to say too much in one paragraph.  I was replying
to your original post in which you said that "until we enable the
people, themselves, to select who and what they will vote for,
changing the way the votes are counted is an exercise in futility".
You are therefore posing the possibility of an *alternative* means of
selecting the "who" and the "what".

My recommendation was therefore to set up an *alternative* electoral
system in parallel with the existing systems (primary and principal).
It would give electors a different means of selection.  Their
participation in one system or another would then inform us which they
preferred.  In this sense, the electors would be "voting" with their
feet between the status quo and the alternative.

I was struck by how like this dual meaning of "voting" is to McLuhan's
perception of communication media in general.  After all, in voting
for a candidate, one is also voting for the form of democracy in which
the choices are offered.  "The medium is the message."

> I believe you are referring to the mechanism on your site, but, even so, I 
> don't understand the question.  I have suggested that voters select 
> nominees by meeting in triads and selecting one of their number to 
> represent them.  I'm unclear about how, exactly, you suggest that should or 
> will occur.  It's possible you have described these details on other 
> threads and I missed them.  If so, I apologize.  I lack the time to digest 
> all the material on this site, but do try to be thorough in any discussions 
> I join.

You posted your petition about practical democracy on September 11
("language/framing quibble").  My own post was before that.  I did not
know about triads at the time.

Now that I do, I see no reason why practical democracy cannot be
offered in a parallel electoral system.  It need have no connection
with the voting mechanism I propose, though you could use Votorola's
code base as a starter.

> re: "The elections are themselves an evaluative medium."
>
> Can that be true?

In general, yes.  Unless I mistake your meaning.  Election implies
evaluation.  The winner of one election is a valuable candidate for
another, mutatis mutandis.  So primary and other preliminary elections
can serve as the qualifying "heats" for a principal election.

> When voting is based on media-disseminated obfuscation, deception and 
> hyperbole, and when public susceptibility to such distortions are so well 
> understood that spin doctors control the flow of information to the public, 
> how can the resulting elections be evaluative of aught but the 
> propagandists?  Are the circumstances in which we find ourselves (in the 
> United States) not proof of the fallacy of that point of view?

I was replying to your question about the *alternative* electoral
system, not about governmental elections in the U.S., and so forth.

My suggestion was to use the alternative electoral method itself as an
evaluator of its own candidates, thus introducing a degree of positive
feedback to the election.  In your own mechanism, for example, the
evaluations at step one of the process are inherited by later steps.
The winners of the level one triads become the candidates for level
two.  So your own practical democracy is a case in which the
"elections are themselves an evaluative medium".

> re: "The same communication channels that traffic in information
>      about ordinary elections are also available for open
>      elections.  So voters have access to mailing lists and chat
>      networks, blogs and broadcast media.  They can use these
>      media to share information and arguments about the
>      candidates."
>
> At the risk of belaboring the point, these are precisely the means that 
> foisted Weapons of Mass Destruction upon us and gave us our present crop of 
> politicians.

It is not correct to say that "mailing lists and chat networks, blogs
and broadcast media" were the means by which the U.S. political
establishment was duped.  I hear that the former Secretary of State
bitterly regrets his role in selling the WMD thesis before the
U.N. General Assembly.  Colin Powell did not get his information from
any of the media I mentioned.  He got it from doctored intelligence
briefings.

It is correct to say that broadcast (mass) media were used in George
Bush's campaign.  They were also used in Bill Clinton's.  But both
candidates also employed air transportation.  Ought we to ban that
technique too?  (Adolf Hitler was the first to use it. ;)

> I'm surprised so few people recognize how the principles laid down by 
> Pavlov, B. F. Skinner and a host of other behavioral scientists are used by 
> our leaders (political and commercial) to milk us like cows.  Mass 
> communications is their tool and they are expert in its use.
>
> If we are to improve our electoral systems, one of our first concerns must 
> be to find a candidate evaluation mechanism that goes deeper than the 
> emotion-inspiring fluff we're fed by the media.

Only the last of the four media I cite is a purely mass medium.  The
others (like this mailing list) are peer to peer.  Blogs are a kind of
hybrid, like the newspapers of the early days (what did they call
them?  the penny press?).

You mentioned the name of Habermas in a previous post.  Have you read
his "Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere"?  If his thesis
is correct, then the birth of modern democracy was tied to new
communication media that became available in the late 1700s and early
1800s.  Should we expect democracy to survive today if we insulate it
from the public?  Or if insulate the public from the media that
defines it?

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/