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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