A structural fault in society owing to a design flaw in the electoral system

[conseo]

Hi Mike,

I'll quickly answer to the latest online version:

> An individual vote in an election has no meaningful effect in the objective 
world, and no effect whatsoever on the official outcome of the election; 
whether the vote is cast or not, the outcome is the same regardless.

This is a strong claim. In fact it already polarizes the audience. The main 
problem you have to explain then is why the majority of people still vote if 
the outcome is zero. Those who have voted for political concepts and believe 
in some policies which have been implemented in the past will oppose you for 
the very reasons of this policy. There are some societies like in Scandinavia 
where the social welfare state definitely marks social progress and it is 
driven by voted parties. 

> Beneath this fact lies a structural fault that emerges here and there in 
society as a series of persistent discontinuities between facts and norms, or 
contents and forms. 

This is an abstract conclusion, which is not bound to the first claim and you 
have to elaborate that more as you do later. I don't think it helps clarify 
your claim here in the second sentence, but rather confuses non-theoretical 
readers.

> One rightly expects to be free because he lives in a democracy and has a 
vote; but the truth is, he has no political freedom at all. I trace the 
underlying cause of this fault to a technical design flaw in the electoral 
system wherein the elector is physically separated from the ballot. This 
separation removes the elector as voter (the active decider) from the social 
means and product of decision, thereby rendering him individually 
powerless.QCW

This is ok for an introduction.

> No electoral power exists in the vote itself, it exists purely in external  
communication networks; although the votes are brought together to make a 
result, the voters are not brought together as such to make a decision, 
therefore no valid decision can be extracted from the result. In the 1700s and 
1800s, middle class society was able to partly overcome this flaw by engaging 
in politically animated practices of decision formation and expression that, 
even without the benefit of a concrete ballot, were nevetherless voter-like.

If you make historical claims, you have to narrow it down and reference your 
sources. I don't know what you are really talking about. In the US there has 
been the democratic party since the independence. In France after the 
revolution there were different groups forming the democratic spectrum from 
right to left, which gave the right/left terminology its basis. 

> This ad hoc practice of "abstract voting" enabled them to reconstitute 
electoral power within the flourishing communication networks of the day.PPS

I don't understand what "abstract voting" means here. Develop your abstract 
argument with an historical/social example showing the general dynamics and 
social reasons for the change. I guess you are talking about private entities 
like stock corporations, which practice some kind of democratic management by 
owners? The concept of voting was not new, if you refer to a historical 
development, can you quote where the historical background comes from? Even if 
you keep it simple for normal readers to understand, it allows to argue much 
better.

> As voting rights later expanded into the population, however, the franchise 
came to include more people who lacked the personal or social means to engage 
in abstract voting and make rational decisions of their own. Their cumulative 
disengagement amounted to a power vacuum that coincided with the rise, after 
1867, of the modern party system in Great Britain. The modernized Liberal and 
Conservative parties each responded by packaging its own ready-made decision, 
thus reducing the input of the elector to a choice of which package to 
consume. 

But Great Britain is different from all other countries in its system. What 
was the social reason for mass parties and more interestingly how have they 
been organized internally? Why? People know that parties have a fixed program, 
I would leave it out unless it helps the argument. More interesting is why 
parties formed at all. Because if they formed to realize a certain concept of 
society, then this ready-made decision is the reason for their public support 
and therefore their existence.

> The resulting transfer of power from the weaker members of the electorate to 
the organized parties was the historical event that opened up the structural 
fault. It opened between the two formal components of political liberty, 
namely individual power and equality. 

I would reformulate it in individual freedom and equality as these have been 
the liberal terms. But if it opened there, then it opened in the middle of 
liberal ideology, where freedom and equality were revolutionary claims leading 
to antagonisms. Many political studies of the 19th century have tried to find 
a compromise for this problem, leading to all kind of utopian and formalist 
solutions.
The liberal revolutions of that time freed up the individual property from 
feudal barriers. But if private property is the foundation of the new society 
then equality cannot be against private property, which was the material 
driving force behind the revolutions. Both in the US and in France the 
revolution were driven by farmers which saw equality in owning their property 
and the revolution gave it to them. The basis of society was private property 
and the belief that liberal rights give everybody the private property 
necessary to enjoy these freedoms. 
The liberal solution is formal equal rights, but real inequality. The 
resulting democratic systems ensured a society based on private property. And 
private property is the same no matter who the owner is. In that sense it is 
emancipating. But if private property is the basis for human rights and 
freedom, then the state is only a superficial institution guaranteeing the 
development of private businesses. From a liberal pov the state has little to 
decide and may not touch the basis of liberal society, which is private 
property. But if the true freedom of society lies in private property, then 
democracy applied to the state is alienated anyway. The division of the voter 
from the ballot is only logical from a liberal pov, because government is not 
meant to intervene in any private individual rights even if these private 
properties are larger than the government. Allowing to replace public 
management (government) every few years is all that is necessary for a private 
business owner. Too much democracy/equality is a thread to private property.

You just claim that it is a design error. But technical designs don't drive 
societies. While it might sound compelling that they couldn't do what we do in 
analogue ways, something like the general assembly would have been possible at 
any time. This doesn't disqualify your formal analysis, but I think we can 
improve it if we understand the historical reasons and where we have to focus 
to create new forms for new social institutions.

> These two components were torn apart for lack of any structural binding in 
society.

Exactly, but you have to make that concrete imo. See prev. point.

> Society is well equipped to handle the various forms of inter-personal or 
mass communication in which electoral power alone exists, but it lacks any 
concomitant support of equality. The ballot itself formalizes equality, but 
only internal to the electoral system; its structural strength cannot be 
realized unless it is externalized and personally bound to the elector. 

For this to work the state as we know it in the liberal sense would have to be 
abandoned and a new totality of consent has to be introduced. See also above. 
Instead of private property the guarantee for individual freedom has to come 
out of this new process. If individual freedom is lost then consent is not of 
interest any more. So we have to progress in both directions to enable a 
consent based process. Better collective management guaranteeing more 
individual freedoms. The problem is bigger than the tying of vote and voter.

Instead of continuity in private ownership and decisions new institutions have 
to form which can manage social reproduction without private property 
directly. Private property is the negation of collective assets as the 
medieval/feudal commons.

> With that as a foundation, society could have provided electoral services on 
the basis of form rather than content;

I assume you mean form in the sense of *non*-distinction between voter and 
vote and content as the party-program. But socially the program was an 
expression of classes forming these parties. So while the form does not fit 
the content of consent based society, it was designed for the society it has 
been applied to. This doesn't mean that it was designed with the majority of 
people in mind, but for the liberal prototype of a business owner. 

> services in support of decision making as opposed to a one-size-fits-all 
consumption. Ordinary competition among service providers would then be 
sufficient to ensure that all electors regardless of personal and social means 
had access to their share of constitutional power and its associated 
opportunities. 

That is a technical solution in the voting system. I am interested more in the 
problem how society changes if we create forms for new social organisation. If 
you talk about that with the occupy movement and the general assembly in mind, 
you might be able to work out some shared analysis/vision on how consent based 
action can be implemented. For example: How do you run a certain 
infrastructure service based on consent? We don't need the answer, but maybe 
the flaw you see can be better mapped in the collective question of our time. 
How to reach a consent-based sustainable future?

> It was only ever a technical design flaw that precluded this development in 
the first place, and brought us instead to the present situation where the 
organized parties make the decisions and exercise the rightful power and 
political freedom that were intended for the citizens.

See above why this sounds naive from a sociological pov imo. 

conseo