[EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process

[Juho Laatu]

On 28.6.2012, at 19.11, Fred Gohlke wrote:

> The only way to eliminate party sponsorship is to conceive a candidate selection process that empowers the people to select their best advocates, independent of the parties.

You can buy some votes with a large (advertising, campaigning) budget. To me the question of sponsorship is therefore simply a question of how much the elections should be "one man one vote" and how much "one dollar one vote".

I see the question of independent selection of candidates to be a related but separete problem, since it would exist also without sponsorship.

> The concept of political parties, by definition, includes party leaders and the selection and sponsorship of candidates for public office. These things are inseparable in party politics.

Why so? At least in theory we could have a political system that runs on goverment budget money only.

> re: "I briefly sketched an election method independent very
>     simple approach above."
> 
> Do you mean the idea that we should "Just cut out party sponsoring and/or set some limits to the cost of personal campaigns."?  If so, how can we accomplish these goals?
> 
> I think the best way to do so is to let the people, themselves, select the candidates (that eliminates party sponsorship) and have the candidates compete with each other to choose the best advocates of the public interest (that eliminates campaigning).  Are there better ways?

There are also more direct ways. In Finland it took some ugly examples like party related support groups using some money that was not intended for campaigning, to make a law that at forces candiates to publish their major sponsors/donations. Publicity seems to lead to some limitations on how much money candidates want to spend and take from different sponsors, and how much sponsors want to give money. Also limits to campaign costs were proposed but not approved this time. The success of these changes depends on how much people want them and how well the democratic system works. The simplest approach is simply to make a law that eliminates all unwanted sponsoring.

> re: "Since politics is a difficult game to control, it may
>     be that we have to cure the problems generated by one
>     governmnet by using a poison that at least cancels the
>     effects of the previous government"
> 
> You may be surprised to know that I don't disagree.  If may be a good idea, as many people think, to press for stop-gap measures to eliminate the worst effects of our present systems.  I don't oppose that.  What I oppose is thinking it will accomplish the fundamental changes needed to replace our oligarchies with democracy.

I agree that the "poison and counter-poison" idea does not mean ideal democracy. But it may mean robust democracy.

The counter-poison approach is however reasonably safe. I mean that trying to build a system that implements an ideal system at one go, without such radical changes that the counter-poison approach represents, may be more risky. I refer e.g. to the soviet system that tried to rule the country and even the world by lifting the best persons to the top (without allowing opposition that could have acted as a counter-poison). The point is thus that we need true opposition, not just claims that the best people can and will work ther way up to the top. Also current parties follow this idea that best people will rule within the party. It would be nice to have softer systems without the controversial and fighting parties, and a system that would not be very oligarchic, but so far we can only try to find such set-ups that might work and be as safe as the rough counter-poison approach.

One may try to improve the current (maybe multi) party based systems so that the harmful effects of sponsoring, self-interest and party favourite candidates will gradually reduce. This could take place both within the parties, within some towns, and at country level. Making the experiments within one fragment of the current system may be safer than making a full revolution that would allow the new proposed system only.

Juho