At 10:13 PM 7/28/2005, Simmons, Forest wrote:
Use an unbiased random sample of the voters at the front end of the election as a "voter jury" style panel for the purpose of getting true polls of the right type, etc. This official voter panel (where every voter has an equal chance of being chosen) would offset some of the damage done by the biased corporate polls, where only voters that are near their telephones during the polling hours get polled, the questions are leading, the anwers are misrepresented, the answers have no bite, so theycan be attempts at manipulation, etc.
This is related to Warren Smith's DDJ (which I think means Direct Democracy by Jury). Unless properly implemented, which could be quite difficult, it could be subject to corruption, unless the identity of the voters is kept secret. And if the voters are kept secret, then who is the keeper of the secrets? (Mr. Smith has answers for these questions, or at least for some of them.)
I'm not saying it is a bad idea. Indeed, there is a resemblance here to my own FA/DP concepts, which ideally use *complete* representation to create voter recommendations; the theory is that the FA/DP structure can be designed to maximize the trustworthiness of the organization. I've described how this can be done many times, for now I'll leave it to the imagination of the reader. Really, any process which does that (maximize trust, particularly in a real way, not a way that merely creates an appearance) would serve.
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