Can our party pick your brain?

[Michael Allan]

Rohan Jayasekera wrote:
> 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).

I don't think this too challenging.  It doesn't matter whether it's
done through the transparency party (TP) or somehow else, the
requirement of participation is easy to meet in this way:

(a) Get a solid, dedicated core of 5 activists on a single issue, plus
a 100 or so voters around them.  Then it's news and the journalists
will run with it.

(b) Given that it's news, a quorum will automatically follow and
everyone will know it.  Expectation alone will be sufficient to
accelerate the fact, if not anticipate it.

To understand (a) and (b), you must understand that new users needn't
be attracted to a central site in order to participate.  The tools are
designed to be carried out to the users.  They are "viral".  Assuming
they work, and there's a stable core of carriers, then it's
unstoppable.

The only puzzling question in all of this is where an organization can
fit.  You and Kevin and Thomas all take an organizational perspective.
>From that perspective, all I can see are these possibilities:

  (i) Non-political organization dedicated to helping people vote.

 (ii) Un-party to add levity to the mix.

(iii) Political party that accepts a place within the budding public
      institution of democracy, rather than trying to internalize that
      institution (however temporarily as Thomas suggests) within
      itself.  Such an organization might contribute to the solid core
      of activists (a) that makes it all happen in the first place.

      So maybe a group of cycling activists in Burnaby or Bonn who
      want a bicycle path, or property owners in Boston or Bogota who
      want lower taxes, something like that.

      TP does not fit comfortably here, IMHO.

 (iv) An organized group of technical activists, or dedicated "tool
      carriers".  These are the midwives, or seed sowers that Thomas
      called for, but in a purer form, closer to the users, the tools,
      and the tool builders.  They needn't be politcally motivated,
      but they could be.

      This is close to TP's goals, if I understand them.

That's not an exhaustive list.  I'm out of my field when it comes to
the practical/social side.  But if you want a sure path to
organizational success, then put your money on (iv).  How could it
possibly fail?

> 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.

That was my own view before I came to work in this field.  Since then
I've come to doubt that representatives are even aware of what their
constituents want.  Those constituents have no means of expressing
themselves, *as such*.  It's a technical shortcoming on their part.

It's an interesting shortcoming in an historical context.  It was
advances in 17th and 18th century communications that brought us
democracy in the first place.  It was an incomplete democracy (and it
still is), but maybe it was an incomplete technology.  Centuries
later, we might be able to finally finish the job.  (Not that the
tools are so wonderful in themselves; they're just ink and paper, it's
what we do with them that makes them exciting.)

> 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.

Imagine 1000 of the riding electors are voting continuously for 3
years, day after day, and 700 of them are saying they'll vote for Joe
Blow.  You just know those 700 are going to turn out on election day
(the one poll that counts) and do just that.  If you ask them why,
they'll tell you.  They'll point to the platform they're drafting
together with Joe and they'll ask your opinion of it.

That's no ordinary poll.  It's a constituency expressing itself.  If
the other 7000 or so active electors in the riding choose to remain
silent, then this isn't the city I thought it was.  But if they do
choose to speak out, and speak in favour of Joe, then Joe it is.  It
doesn't take a political party to get that message out.  It only takes
Joe and a core group of activists with their hands in the toolset,
which is the medium of expression.  The phrase attributed to Marshall
McLuhan is wholly apt here, "the medium is the message".

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/