Can our party pick your brain?

[Rohan Jayasekera]

On Feb 24, 12:39 pm, Michael Allan <m... at zelea.com> wrote:
> Once the public primary of the riding residents, or the TP (if you
> accept it's all the same) has succeeded in predicting an election,
> then no official can ever hope to be re-elected except through that
> primary.  Given that, it does not matter if she's a Liberal,
> Conservative or NDP brand of candidate who wins election, instead of a
> TP brand.  The branding makes no difference, because the elected
> official will not listen to the party, or to the party members.  She
> will listen to the electors.  As every politician knows, "you dance
> with them that brought you."

Yes, the TP may not even need to win an election in a riding to
achieve direct democracy in that riding.  But I see some difficult
requirements for that to happen:

1. There must be sufficiently high public participation in the direct-
democracy process that it accurately reflects what *all* the voters in
the riding think, in the opinions of both (a) the elected
representative and (b) the people who elected him/her as a member of
party X, not the TP.  Representatives who switch parties while elected
often get thrown out at the next opportunity as they are seen as
having betrayed their mandate, so they will be extremely cautious.  To
get such a high level of public participation will be a challenge; it
might actually be easier to elect a member of the TP because that can
happen even with low voter turnout and with a low percentage voting TP
(except in places where a majority is required via runoff elections).

2. At least here in Canada, as far as I can tell most incumbent
representatives vote along party lines regardless of what their
constituents think.  Many "party faithful" may not even be
psychologically capable of doing anything else.  Fortunately we do
have some incumbents who believe that above all their job is to
represent their constituents, and their ridings could take the path
you suggest.

3. Excuses for ignoring the results of a direct-democracy process must
be overcome, e.g. "oh, that's just a bunch of geeks, not the real
people who vote on election day" and "oh, polling is already common,
but we can't trust the results to be accurate -- that's why we have
proper elections" (while pointing to the famous photo of Truman
holding up the newspaper headline "Dewey Defeats Truman").  Again,
it's not only the representative who must be convinced but lots of
voters too.

Rohan